


The Things We Deserve

by Viraaja



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage Hux Has Issues, Armitage Hux Needs A Hug, Armitage Hux is a Mess, Character Study, Emotional Edging, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, Feels, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Life Day (Star Wars), M/M, Medical Procedures, Mental Health Issues, Non-Linear Narrative, Poe Dameron Is A Mess, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug, Profuse amounts of tea drinking, Protective Poe Dameron, scar kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:01:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28385163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viraaja/pseuds/Viraaja
Summary: “Here, try this,” Poe’s voice is too quiet, too soft, to be speaking to Hux. But there he is, spoon in hand, a blob of cookie dough perched precariously on the edge.Hux wonders what the fuck is happening when his mouth falls open and Poe carefully slips the spoon past his lips.
Relationships: Finn/Rey (Star Wars), Finn/Rey/Rose Tico, Poe Dameron/Armitage Hux, Rey/Rose Tico
Comments: 20
Kudos: 101





	The Things We Deserve

**Author's Note:**

> Something a little different from me - I needed a break from all the angst in _[Terms of Surrender](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24380551)_ so this little holiday fluff piece has been born. 
> 
> Hope y'all enjoy this fic and your holiday season, whatever you might celebrate! Thanks for making 2020 bearable :)

The message burns up at him.

He reads it twice more before he’s sure he has the right address, reciting the string of numbers and flowery words to the cabby who is staring at him in the rear view mirror. Hux doesn’t think he’s been recognized, but it’s a slip he’s made enough times in the past to be wary.

The ride is long. Expensive. And he ticks off his quickly depleting credits from the spreadsheet he keeps in his head. This excursion is costing him, and the thought that he should have just stayed at home rears familiar and aching in his mind. Rent will be due in two weeks, and he’ll barely have half the credits by the time he pays the cabby and his portion of the cabin rental. He had bit his tongue when Rose had sent the number over. Almost dropped the idea right then and there until her next text read _Poe_ _’s glad you're gonna be there ;)_ and then Hux hadn’t had a choice.

It’s already snowing by the time the cabby drops him off at the gravel path that will take him to the cabin. At least, Hux assumes it will lead to the cabin. He supposes it could actually take him to a serial killer’s bunker, because it’s dark and the trees are bare and the rocks under his feet slip icy beneath his thin leather soles, and the lights in the distance hardly appear welcoming at all. Maybe the cabby is already on his way back with a slug thrower and a tarp, ready to take out General Hux for good, achieve what the New Republic never was able to, not when Leia had taken a stand in his defense.

Hux buries his nose in his scarf, blinks his eyes against the flurries, and sniffs against the cold that tingles in his sinuses. He wouldn’t have packed his cane away in his bag, if he’d known the journey to the cabin, or bunker, or whatever, would be this harrowing. Maybe he never would have come.

Turns out, it is in fact a cabin. _The_ cabin, by the way the door swings in on its hinges to release of wall of warm, sweetly smelling air that immediately makes Hux want to turn around and run (except he can’t run, not anymore, for many and varied reasons). It’s been almost a month since he’s last seen Rose, longer since he’s been in the presence of anyone else in the _gang_ as they’d taken to calling themselves. But he’s here now, and he’s out the credits whether he sticks around or not, so as Rose’s face glows up at him with a smile he’s only recently become accustomed to, he returns it with a half-hearted sneer.

“Hux is here!” She _shrieks_ over her shoulder, as if his arrival is something to be celebrated. And it's only now that he sees the flush of her cheeks, the watery twinkle in her eyes, smells the cloying tang of liquor on her breath as she leans in to grab his hand and tug him forward.

“You’re drunk,” is probably not the first thing he should say to her, not when it inspires her to tilt her head to his arm and hang off him like one of the ornaments on the gaudy looking tree in the corner.

“Yeah, and you will be too, soon enough,” she giggles as she pulls him over the threshold, hands warm where his are icy.

“I don’t drink,” is lost amongst the rush of sound that consumes him. Music is playing, some jovial jig that sounds older than he is. Not that thirty seven is old, but then not everyone has lived the amount of lives Hux has. Except maybe a cat. Or the people in this room - these people who know him as well as he knows himself. Maybe better, which is where most of his problems lay. These are the only people in his life that aren’t strangers, yet make Hux feel far stranger than any stranger ever could. And suddenly the cresting wave of laughter that spills from the room feels more claustrophobic than the weighted warmth that wraps around him.

An arm. It’s an arm.

Poe’s arm.

The touch is fleeting. A quick squeeze, there and long gone, but lingering in the way anything having to do with Poe lingers.

He’s got a glass in his hand, a pour of some golden liquid Hux guesses is scotch. And he’s smiling at Hux in that way that makes him want to vomit all over his worn leather shoes with how his stomach flips so obnoxiously.

“Heya, Hugs,” his voice is as warm as the heat coming off of Hux’s face, and as Poe moves across the room to take a seat on the armrest of the little couch Finn is lounging on, Hux can’t help but feel far colder than he has all day.

-

The spray of stars above wink out of existence faster than time should allow. They sparkle and flux against the low gray of the descending clouds, and Hux thinks, that too, is not quite _right_. But nothing seems right, just then. Not the sparkle of stars, nor the way those clouds taste acrid, like the metallic burn of electronics.

And certainly, there is no explanation for why Poe Dameron steps into his line of sight, all warm-bodied and touching hands against a cold that has set into Hux’s limbs; because those aren’t quite right, either.

“Shit, Hugs,” Dameron breathes as his fingers touch his cheek, drawing his eyes up away from where Hux has been looking down at the dead body draped over top his. “Hold still, help is coming, won’t be long now.”

When the stars flicker again, it’s only Dameron’s flinch that reveals that they aren’t stars at all, but sparks - the clouds smoke - and the corpse lying atop him is, in fact, his own broken body.

-

Despite the long set sun, the evening is early enough that dinner has yet to be served. Hux is put to work in the kitchen with Rey and Finn and Poe. They have him dice potatoes, while Rey works at something in a skillet, and Finn spills flour all over the counter in an attempt to make cookies. Hux thinks he’s had a cookie before, probably. It’s more likely than it is not. But even if he can’t remember what they taste like, he can’t help but think they’re bound to be better than the meal replacement shakes he’s been living off for the last year and a half.

Poe stands across from Finn, reciting the recipe from his datapad while guessing at the conversions. Hux almost corrects them, almost snaps at them that baking is an art form and if they’re going to waste that much expensive sugar and chocolate they may as well get the recipe right. Instead he presses his lips to a line and passes the potatoes to Rey and washes his hands in the sink while thinking about whether they were going to ask him to contribute towards the groceries as well. His spreadsheet adjusts automatically in his head, the depleting numbers making the press of his lips turn into a frown.

At least the water is warm. Hux luxuriates in that for longer than necessary.

But then the presence of a body beside his makes Hux draw up cold, and his hands are trembling all over again.

“Here, try this,” Poe’s voice is too quiet, too soft, to be speaking to Hux. But there he is, spoon in hand, a blob of cookie dough perched precariously on the edge.

Hux wonders what the fuck is happening when his mouth falls open and Poe carefully slips the spoon past his lips.

“Good, right?” Poe asks with a grin, while Hux is unable to respond, too caught up in the tacky sensation of dough on his tongue and Poe’s proximity to his body. Poe is warm, the cookie dough is sweet. And still Hux can’t stop shivering.

Poe withdraws the spoon so slowly Hux thinks he might have lived yet another life in the time it took for the utensil to leave his mouth.

Thinks he might have actually died when Poe puts the spoon into his own grinning mouth while turning away.

Hux excuses himself from the kitchen, muttering something about unpacking. Instead, he finds the refresher and sinks to the floor to shiver in private.

-

He wakes up to lights again. This time they glow bright and white, spilling over the pale blue blanket that hides Hux’s broken body but does close to nothing to keep him warm. He is cold, so cold, cold enough that he is afraid something else is wrong with him, something the doctors only shrug at and don’t even bother noting on his chart. Hux knows this, because he’s read his own chart. Many times, if only because it’s all he has to do in this room besides sleep, and Hux has never been particularly good at sleeping.

It’s been two days since he woke up. Two days since he discovered his shattered body had been repaired in ways he never would have approved of. It’s archaic, almost, the measures the Resistance took to put him back together. _We didn_ _’t have a bacta tank for you_ had been the surgeon’s way of saying _people more deserving are using the tank instead_. And Hux had not even been mad, not really.

What he was mad about probably had to do with the fact that they had bothered fixing him at all.

His lower right leg and foot are held together by a cage of metal. It’s the only thing not covered by his blanket, because the nest of metal rods and screws and exposed flesh apparently has to be completely visible so Hux knows what sort of fucking horror show he owes these doctors for. He can’t _feel_ anything in his leg or foot, for which he is sort of grateful, but then everything else in his body hurts so badly it’s not like it's that much of a relief. The rest of his aching body, however, is covered in bacta and bandages, and very little metal, at least.

He had asked why they didn’t just give him a robotic prosthetic. He was told it was too expensive.

Hux figured it had more to do with how they really just wanted him to suffer.

Like Poe Dameron, who’s own brand of suffering involves hanging around the hospital, and particularly his room, every hour of every day.

“Awake again, Hugs? That’s happening more often,” Dameron has poked his head around the threshold to his room. That, at least, had been a mercy. His room is small but private, likely because he’s expected to be here for a while - that, or to hide him away from the rest of the patients. The non war criminal patients. “How you feeling?”

“It still feels like a Star Destroyer landed on top of me. How do you _think_ I feel, Dameron?” Hux can’t help but snap, not when Dameron is hauling something into his room that looks far too much like a chair. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Keeping an eye on our war hero, of course,” Dameron smiles as he slips his jacket off and drapes it over the back of his chair, as if he’s planning to stay awhile. Hux turns away, shifts what body parts he can move without triggering excruciating pain, and tries not to look at Dameron or his smile - all white teeth and browned skin. And dark hair…even darker eyes…

Hux frowns, stomping down on those thoughts with his mind since his actual foot is in no shape for any kind of physical stomping, let alone the kind Hux would like to perform on Dameron’s stupid face.

“They’re gonna give you a pardon, Leia says,” Dameron announces it as if Hux is supposed to care. As if he expects Hux to be excited by a life without the First Order.

“They’re better off executing me. Politically it will send a better message, and it will prevent a bounty hunter or civilian from taking matters into their own hands.” Or Hux himself. He is a coward and a failure, but he thinks maybe he could get that right, if he gave it another try.

So when Dameron muses aloud, “I didn’t think of that,” Hux doesn’t understand why it hurts so much.

-

He makes it to his room eventually. It’s a small rectangular thing made out of the same wide wooden beams and pale plaster walls the rest of the cabin is constructed from. Two beds occupy two walls, and Hux knows his to be the one under the window only because the other already looks slept-in.

And the fact that Poe's leather bomber is draped over the foot like it always belonged there.

They’re sharing a room. Of course they’re sharing a fucking room.

Hux drops down onto his mattress. Drops his head into his hands. His leg aches, and his head hurts, and his heart won’t stop racing. And all he can think about is if Poe's mouth tastes like cookie dough or the mint of his toothpaste.

The little voice in the back of his head, the same one that had emerged sometime after Starkiller Base but before he’d turned spy, points out that this is what he had _hoped_ for. And Hux shoves the thought away because hope has never served him before and he doesn’t expect it to start now.

Suddenly, Hux is exhausted. The jump from Coruscant had been long, the cab ride uncomfortable, and now all Hux wants is a nap and maybe a warm shower. But the bed is closer than the fresher and Hux doesn’t think anyone will notice, let alone care, if he disappears for a little while.

There is a draft coming through the window. It hangs lazy over Hux’s body, spilling across the bed with a cold weight where Hux has curled up. He welcomes the shivers it inspires, because this time they make sense. And he lets the cold sink in. Lets it numb his nerves alongside his mind, as his eyes drift shut over the vision of Poe’s jacket sprawled lazy over his thoughts, like it has always belonged there.

-

Dameron is dragging something new into his room. Not a chair this time, but some cylindrical contraption that looks like a waste receptacle. Hux knows it’s not when Dameron plugs it into the wall.

“Check this out,” Dameron crows like he has achieved something monumental in his constant subjection of Hux to his presence. But then he opens the contraption and draws out a blanket.

It’s warm. Hux can feel it from where he’s propped against the raised head of his bed. Warm. The blanket is _warm._

So when Dameron drapes it over his body, Hux doesn’t understand why he shivers so much harder.

Dameron tucks the blanket in around him tightly enough that Hux feels like he’s been caught in a trap. Dameron’s fingers are strong, where they curl down his sides, past his hips - where they smooth over his thighs. And the blanket really is warm. Certainly warmer than his body, but not warm enough to explain the heat in Hux’s face. He wants to smother that heat behind his hands, but Dameron has captured those now too, has folded both between his two large hands so that his fingertips can rub circles into Hux’s.

“Feels nice, right?” Dameron breathes over his hands, and it blooms moist and warm. As warm as the blanket, maybe warmer. Hux lets it happen, because its easier than telling Dameron to get the fuck out. Because it’s been days since Hux had realized it was these things that Dameron was doing to him that hurt far more than his broken body, and Hux knows he deserves all the pain the universe can throw at him.

So that's the excuse he gives himself, when he flexes his fingers against the warmth of Dameron's breath, and lets his eyes meet Dameron's as his head dips in a single nod of affirmation.

-

It’s Rose who pokes her head into his and Poe’s room in to tell him dinner is ready.

The meal is an elaborate affair. It starts with the dish Rey had been working on. Some sort of creamy soup that sticks to the sides of Hux’s bowl as well as it does the lining of his stomach. He feels full before he’s even finished his serving, and thinks he should excuse himself now, before he insults everyone by being unable to finish his portion of the main course. He never gets his chance, however, when Rose sweeps over with a heaping plate of vegetables and some meat thing Rey describes as a loaf.

Hux eats it. He eats every last damn bite. It tastes good, he is almost loathe to admit, because that would mean admitting he is glad to be here, and Hux hasn’t decided if he is glad to be anywhere, not yet. Despite what Rose may tell him.

Beside Hux, she is speaking - some joke, maybe a story, Hux can’t tell. Across the table, Poe is laughing and the sound is as warm and full as his belly is, right then. It seems Rose is always saying something that makes Poe laugh, and Hux wishes he knew what was so funny, maybe then he could-

Hux grabs his glass of ice water, takes a gulp. The warmth in his belly dissipates, the fullness transforming into a cold dense brick.

When he looks up, Poe is watching him. His spoon twirls an idle path over his adept fingers, catching the golden light of the half-melted candle between them.

When Poe brings the spoon to his mouth, it’s Hux who licks his lips.

-

“Why didn’t you let us extract you when we had the chance?” Dameron throws the question down at his broken foot like it’s nothing. Like it isn’t something Hux asks himself everyday, staring down at his barely living body like it hadn’t been him who had betrayed it.

Hux is covered in one of the warmed blankets. He’s stopped shivering despite his uncovered feet, despite Dameron’s filthy boots which are kicked up beside his, rubber soles where Hux’s are bared toes. He can’t feel much in the caged foot, but the other brushes against Dameron’s dirty boot with nearly every breath Hux takes. He’d move it away if he could, but the blaster wound to his thigh makes moving hurt too much.

“I wanted to die.”

Hux almost smiles when he sees Dameron’s shocked expression. Knows it would have been too much - maybe enough to finally drive Dameron away when nothing else seemed to work. Hux doesn’t remember at what point he stopped wanting to drive him away.

Dameron is silent for a long while. It’s not unusual for him to fall silent. In fact, Hux finds it peculiar just how quiet Dameron can be. He’s always assumed Dameron would be the talkative type. He had been, over their comms, when Hux was feeding him secrets and all Dameron could do was crack jokes.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Dameron eventually says. He sounds honest, but Hux refuses to look at him, doesn’t want to see the pity he knows he’ll find. “And I’m glad I found you on the Steadfast.”

 _I_ _’m not._ Hux doesn’t say. Because he’s not sure that’s true, anymore. And even if he doesn’t want Dameron to go, he certainly doesn’t want to give him a reason to stay.

The shivering is back now, and Hux shifts so he can tug the blanket up to his shoulders. It makes his foot flex, and when his toes brush Dameron’s boot he sucks in a breath that must have sounded like a gasp for how the weight of Dameron’s attention falls heavy.

“Still cold?” he asks. Before Hux can deny it Dameron is pulling out a fresh blanket, layering it atop the other. Hux lets him. He _allows_ him. And that knowledge brings forth a heat that rivals the blanket's. And when the shivering subsides and Hux relaxes back into the bed, he thinks maybe Dameron knows what he needs better than he does. Thinks maybe it has been that way for a while.

-

After dinner Hux finds himself on the couch in front of the fireplace. Rose had insisted, when Hux had nearly dropped his face into his emptied dinner plate. His nap had done little except make him more tired, and the large meal had apparently been the final blow to his impending exhaustion.

“Go relax, we’ve got clean up covered,” she had murmured to him while gathering his cutlery. And Hux had obeyed not only because he was tired, but because the kitchen is big, but not really big enough for five adult human bodies.

Now, though, as the bubbly sound of laughter drifts into the vaulted sitting room to echo buoyant in the acoustics (far louder than the soft jigs playing on loop out of the small radio on the mantle), Hux wonders if he shouldn’t have gone straight to bed. His eyes are falling closed and the warmth from the crackling fire in front of him is lulling him into a peaceful place he can normally only achieve with a large dose of sleep aides.

The sensation of a blanket settling over him brings Hux back to the surface of his slumbering thoughts.

Poe is bent over him, laying a big fluffy blanket over his lap and a smile over his face.

He blinks up at Poe stupidly, because he doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know what to _do_ , when Poe comes round to settle onto the loveseat beside him. He kicks his own foot up onto the same ottoman Hux has propped his bad one atop and their feet touch, barely, but enough.

It’s all he can do to hold still and watch warily as Poe draws his datapad out of his pocket and proceeds to flick through screens as if nothing is wrong. News, messages, dirty holos - Hux doesn’t know - doesn’t care - because this casual ease lands so intimate that Hux can’t help but feel the shivers begin to overwhelm him again.

“Still cold?” Poe asks and Hux snaps to attention, eyes flying up from where they had drifted down to Poe’s hands.

“No.” Hux near flinches when the word comes out as a whisper. _Fuck_ , he is a _mess_. Why is he always a mess around Poe?

“Hold on, I’ve got an idea,” Poe states as he stands up, and Hux wants to tell him to stay when it becomes obvious that Poe is leaving. But the words don’t come, not now, just as they had not when Hux had needed to speak them the most, so long ago.

As Poe disappears into the kitchen to return to his friends, Hux’s body stops trembling, much to his dismay.

-

“You’ve been cleared for caf!” Dameron very nearly shouts as he rounds the corner, two steaming cups in his hands and a grin on his face.

The cups splash hot over Dameron’s palms, and the raspy sound of his curses twist something loose inside Hux. But then the sight of Dameron sucking at the soft strip of flesh that connects his fingers to his thumb tightens that something right back up again, and Hux can’t turn away as Dameron’s mouth moves.

“I don’t drink caf,” Hux protests when Dameron finally presses a cup into his waiting hands. It’s golden brown. He has added something to it. Milk, maybe sugar. Hux won’t drink it, because it’s true, he does not like caf, he likes _tea_ , but he doesn’t complain any more than that because the cup is hot and the heat it gives off is nice, and Dameron is settling into the chair beside his bed like he’s going to stay a while.

And he does. He always stays. But it never gets easier for Hux, he always expects him to go, no matter how many times he doesn’t.

Well, that’s not quite right. Dameron always _eventually_ leaves. If not because Hux starts nodding off, then because he has some responsibility for an organization from Naboo that calls him away. Poe has a job, a political or non-profit thing, that doesn't involve flying a starfighter into a dogfight and Hux can't help but think of that as a complete waste of his talents.

Hux keeps that to himself, as he does most of his thoughts this visit. He’s barely said much in the few hours Dameron has sat there before he has somewhere to be and gathers up his empty cup and datapad. Hux had only listened while Dameron had spoken incessantly since he arrived - going on and on about the First Order’s official surrender and how Rey and Rose and Finn and all these people Hux knows by name and face but not nearly in the manner Dameron’s stories presume he should are going to have a celebration that night and he wishes Hux could attend.

“You’re the real hero, after all,” said like it should be Hux at the press conference declaring the _good_ news. Instead, it will be Dameron. Dameron, who will stand at the podium and declare peace across a Galaxy which has never known peace, just the comfort of the familiar and the predictability of a corrupt system.

Dameron must have become a mind reader at some point, because he reads Hux’s mood as easily as if Hux had spoken aloud.

“I know this is not what you wanted, not really,” and despite what Dameron is implying the words come out genuine, sympathetic. Not because he thinks the First Order deserved a second chance to conquer the Galaxy after the Sith influence had been purged, but because for some reason, Dameron wants him to feel better.

“What will happen to them? To the Order?” His voice doesn’t waver, but it doesn’t need to. Dameron is beside him again, this time with his hip propped against the side of his bed, half sat across the edge of the mattress, staring down at him as if Hux is actually asking _what will happen to me_. The blanket hides how his fingers have curled into a fist.

“Finn has been working with some doctors and several aid groups to develop a rehabilitation program. Job training, education opportunities, housing and mental health services. It’s all voluntary, they’re not forcing it upon anyone, but they’ve had a really strong turnout, and there are plans to expand the program.” Poe’s fingers don’t find his, but by the way they sprawl over top the blanket Hux imagines they are searching.

 _You could do it too, it_ _’s an option._ Goes unsaid.

He won’t. Physical rehabilitation is torture enough, and Hux already knows his mental component is beyond help - has been, for a long time. His defection to the Resistance is proof of that. And he doesn’t think anyone else could hear him the way Dameron hears him, even when he sits here saying nothing at all.

Shorly after, Dameron leaves.

Hux cradles the cup of caf close as Dameron disappears from the threshold of his room. It has long grown cold, the heat dissipated, the steam evaporated. But Hux keeps it close, stares down into it, keeps staring long after the cup has begun to soften. The caf is the same color as Dameron’s skin, Hux thinks, as he finally brings the cup up to touch his lips.

It’s not what Hux expects: a little rich and much too sweet. But, it's not as awful as he expects, and he thinks he can taste the appeal, could even grow to enjoy it, if given the chance.

-

“Here, maybe this will help.”

Poe is back and he is pressing a mug into Hux’s hands. It’s tea. Not Taurine, but dark and black just as he likes, leaves loosely packed into a little cage whose chain is draped precariously over the edge.

Hux accepts the mug. Holds it close while Poe returns to his spot on the loveseat beside him, datapad once again in his hands.

His attention everywhere but where Hux wants it.

But Hux understands he does not deserve Poe’s attention. Had been lucky to have it once, those two yeas ago, before he’d turned him away…and Hux thinks he will not get a second chance. Not again. Not when he’s already used up all his second chances.

The tea is thin and biting when it touches his tongue, just like he prefers. But it goes down wrong, and Hux can’t help but acknowledge what he wants is something a little richer, a little more sweet, something a little less bitter.

-

Dameron is there after the final surgery to his leg when the metal contraption on his foot comes off. In particular, he’s there to hold the pan under his face while Hux vomits up everything that had been in his stomach, which wasn’t much, but still enough to drip into the pan in long viscose retches.

Dameron holds the pan, and he rubs his back, and he speaks to the surgeon on Hux’s behalf when he comes in to check his dressings.

“Too much anesthesia,” the doctor explains like it’s a simple mistake, except Hux knows by the throb in his head and the ache in his spine and the race of his heart that too much had been borderline overdose, and that he had come quite close to dying for the second time in his life. Or maybe it was the third. He has lost track.

“Can you give him anything for the nausea?” Dameron is asking, like the surgeon will actually try to help Hux beyond the bare minimum his oath requires. The doctor says he’ll see what he can do, and then leaves. He never returns. The nurse he sends in his stead jams the needle so deeply into Hux’s vein that he’s sure she’s missed her mark entirely, until the sensation of liquid ballooning into a space too small to fit makes him retch again.

“Hey,” Dameron snaps at the nurse, while his hands hover frantic over Hux’s body, “be careful.”

But the nurse only ducks away with a sniff. Hux’s arm is already bruising, darkening alongside the expression on Poe’s face.

“I’ll be right back,” says Dameron as he leaves on the heels of the nurse.

He doesn’t return. And this, Hux thinks as he curls over the pan in his lap and retches once more and his blood paints red and purple up the curve of his bicep, is what he deserves. What he has earned. What he should learn to expect, from the world and whatever future he might have in it.

Dameron does return.

It’s just that Hux has already fallen asleep by the time he sits back down in his chair, so that Hux only has phantom memories of Dameron at his bedside, like a dream he can barely remember, burning visceral into the drugged-out landscape of his mind.

But Hux knows it’s not a dream, because Dameron is there when he wakes, head listing onto his shoulder, face relaxed in sleep.

 _He_ _’s handsome_ , he thinks to himself before his stomach plunges and his shivers come back. It’s too much. A step too far, something that has brought Dameron too close, dangerously close, in all the ways Hux has never let anyone get close.

Hux finds his medical pager, squeezes down the button that will call the nurse until his thumb hurts, because anything is better than _this_ \- than whatever _this_ means.

-

Hux barely remembers making it into his bed. He only remembers Poe rousing him from where he’s drifted off on the loveseat. Remembers warm hands on his as he’s dragged up to his feet. And he remembers very acutely the weight of Poe’s arm around his waist and the sound of his voice in his ear as he wishes the others goodnight and helps Hux hobble his way into their shared bedroom.

And he remembers the feel of Poe’s hands tucking a blanket in around his body: the strong curl of fingers down his sides, past his hips, over his thighs.

Hux spends most of the night laid out awake and uncomfortably aware.

Aware of Poe across the room, head tilted towards Hux in a way that the moon reflects cool off his face, casting the planes of his cheeks and the shadow of his jaw in darkened relief.

He’s just as handsome then as he had been over a year ago, Hux is finally ready to admit, even if it comes far too late.

Beneath the covers, Hux’s fists curl, and he shivers harder than he has yet.

-

Hux has to start walking, again.

He doesn’t think he’s ready, but the surgeon insists that if he doesn’t start walking soon he might never again. So that fear is enough to propel Hux from his bed and onto his feet and across the floor in the almost-steps that feel more like falling than anything else.

He doesn’t actually fall, of course. The walker they have given him catches his weight when his ruined leg can’t. But by the look on the face of the physiotherapist who is supposed to be helping, something other than the state of his leg is wrong with him, and Hux has a good guess as to what that is. So he forces himself forward to spite that look, and the medical staff's open dissatisfaction with the state of his very living.

It's not until Dameron enters the room with a gleeful shout that Hux finally staggers.

“Hugs, you’re walking!”

“Hardly, Dameron,” he hears himself respond breathlessly. Because he’s not. He’s literally already out of stamina from dragging himself across the floor with the aid of an aluminum walker. But when Dameron levels his smile upon Hux as if he’s somehow achieved something as monumental as Dameron’s ability to exist in Hux’s life, Hux can’t remember when he had gone from resentful to grateful.

-

The nightmares come eventually, as they tend to, once Hux has stewed in his own thoughts long enough to drift off to sleep. He wakes himself with his gasp, the tangle of bedclothes encasing his body in a cold sweat that permeates his very bones. Across the room, Hux can feel Poe’s eyes on him, like the lingering touch of the nightmares he can hardly remember, but knows the shape of, in the deep seat of his consciousness.

Hux wants Poe to ask him what’s wrong. To offer him comfort. To climb out of his bed and join Hux in his, gather him into his arms and sooth away the memories and the thoughts and the pain that plagues him, as Poe once seemed so wont to do.

Instead, he rolls over to face Poe while curling into himself to nurse his body back into submission. And as he examines Poe’s face in the dim moonlight, he understands it’s not up to Poe to provide those things when Hux has not even asked for them.

Because he knows Poe would. He knows all he has to do is ask.

From his bed, Poe smiles. It’s a small thing, but carries so much, lifts a weight from Hux’s chest that he can’t help but release with a sigh. It’s the most he’s said to Poe yet, despite what few words he’s uttered since arriving, and Poe’s smile breaks into a knowing grin as he tugs his blanket tighter around himself. Hux mirrors his motions, pulling his clammy blanket around himself as best he can. He imagines it is dry and warmed - that he can feel the way the blanket would wrap tightly if it were Poe’s hands tucking it in around his body, just like in his memories - things relived so many times now that they feel as much a dream as the nightmares he can’t hardly recall.

When Hux drifts off again, the nightmares don’t return, but dreams do.

-

The bacta comes off about two weeks after Hux begins physical therapy. Like with his final surgery, Dameron is there when it happens, stares openly as the surgeon and a nurse unwrap the superficial bandages to reveal the bacta patches beneath. They litter his body to varying degrees, mostly concentrated on his shattered leg and his chest. The leg looks good; his scars reduced to a silvery snaking iridescence, something the doctor predicts will fade further.

His chest, however, looks raw and barely healed. Here, the skin stretches taunt at the edges of the deep red scar. Old, the wound was left too long without treatment for the scar to ever fully fade. Hux wishes suddenly, and not for the first time, that Dameron wasn’t here to see him like this - to see how awful and ruined his body has become - to be fully exposed to how the scars on his inside are now reflected on his shattered surface, no longer able to be hidden beneath a straight posture and a confident step.

His chest feels too tight when the doctor has him raise his arms, and Hux has no idea if it’s from his mangled pectorals or the emotion that is swelling to hideous life.

“You’ll need physical therapy for this as well, I’ll have it added to your chart.”

“No,” Hux protests, thinking of the physiotherapist who spends her time lounging against the wall watching Hux struggle across the room on his ruined leg without a word of help. “I understand the treatment, I can perform it without assistance.”

“Hugs, you should let-”

_Don’t tell me what to do._

“ _No_.” He snarls before he can stop himself, emotion cracking his control, and the doctor takes the smallest, yet quickest step back. The nurse leaves in a flurry.

“Excuse me.” And then the doctor is gone, too, and it’s suddenly just him and Dameron and Dameron’s scowl.

“They’re just trying to help,” Dameron says as if he hasn’t sat in that chair for nearly three months and been observant to just what this place’s definition of help entailed. As if Dameron hasn’t been helping him more than any medical professional, much to Hux’s prideful dismay.

“I don’t want help,” he snaps, “I want to leave,” and Hux hates how it sounds so much like a plea.

Dameron is quiet. Watches him with a temerity Hux has never seen in him before, like the world outside this room has been waiting for its moment to converge on them and it’s been all Dameron could do to hold that back.

“Am I a prisoner?” Hux demands in the face of Poe’s silence. Because that’s how he feels right then. Some personal prisoner to whatever righteous agenda Dameron has planned for him; held hostage to this man’s idea of what Hux’s future should look like. “Am I going to be confined here forever?”

The words strike harsh, Hux can see the way Dameron flinches in the face of them.

“Of course not,” Dameron breathes, then pauses. His face is closed as he meets Hux’s eyes, devoid of any reaction as he finds what he is looking for. “You really ready to leave?”

_No._

“Yes.”

“I’ll begin the arrangements.”

Dameron doesn’t sound happy about it.

He sounds sad.

-

Poe is not there when he wakes. Hux is not entirely sure if he had ever been there at all. Because with the cresting of the late morning sun, everything from the past evening feels far away. But then Hux drags himself from his bed in staggered steps, his leg stiff and his foot aching, to limp himself over to where his suitcase sits next to Poe’s bag. He needs to get his cane out, because today is going to be one of _those_ days, much to Hux’s humiliation. But instead, he finds himself staring down at the white shirt, the worn scarf, and the necklace which sits coiled atop where Poe’s bag sits open and exposed.

Hux is still staring down at it when Poe enters the room. He’s all bared skin with a towel wrapped around his waist, and that, more than him being caught staring at his bag, is what sets Hux’s face to a deep pink flush.

“Morning, Hugs,” he says from where he drips water onto the hardwood just inside the threshold. Hux feels the flush spread down his neck, following the same path a droplet of water is taking down Poe’s. It’s all Hux can do to tear his eyes away before the drop reaches Poe’s pectoral. “Need help?”

“I don’t need to be coddled,” Hux hears himself snap before his mind can catch up with a _yes, thank you_.

Poe is looking at him sadly, now, “I know that.”

 _I remember_.

Hux digs through his bag and finds what he needs: his cane, his toothbrush, underwear, and a change of shirt. He slept in his only pair of slacks and he’s not ready to surrender to his sweatpants - not yet - not while Poe is staring after him like he needs putting back together all over again.

Or maybe he’s staring at the cane. It's the same one he had brought to Hux’s room so long ago - had maybe meant to give him but had instead left behind.

Later, long after he’s showered and dressed and thinking about everything he’s ever fucked up for himself, he emerges into the living area to find Rose and Rey cuddled together on the sofa sharing a pot of caf. Rose waves him over with a welcoming _‘Morning!_ While Rey pours him a cup.

The mug is warm between his palms. There’s a little bit of milk and some sugar on the low table in front of the cold hearth and hesitantly, though not regretfully, Hux adds some to his mug. The caf is warm, rich, sweet, and Hux finds he actually has a taste for it.

-

“Witness protection program,” Dameron slides the datapad across the little swing table of Hux’s bed. “Leia got you approved, set you up with a place to stay, a job, a name.”

Hux swipes through the payload of data, most of the words scrolling by in broken sentences. Facts replaced by ideas, as Hux’s imagination runs off with the idea of taking on a new and unknown identity. _A Fresh Start,_ the headline of the digital pamphlet reads, as if Hux’s second chance is an opportunity.

It’s not. It’s an escape. That’s all - a retreat - a failure of justice - a coward’s cop-out.

“I thought you were joking,” Hux says simply as he closes the data file and places the pad back on the table. “I thought there would be a-” he licks his lips as his eyes slide to meet Dameron's, “-a trial?”

Dameron's eyes are dark. So dark they’re beautiful. And Hux doesn’t know how they can look at him like he’s something worth looking at.

“No, I wasn’t joking. You’ve got a full pardon,” Dameron says like it’s no big deal. Like Hux hasn’t just slid out of fate’s harrowing grasp.

“A pardon.” The words taste wrong. Because they are wrong. This is not what Hux deserves, and he wants to scream that at someone. Thinks someone out there would listen, understand, and then take mercy on him.

Instead, he’s told that in two weeks time he’s going to be released from the medbay to Coruscant and a life as a stranger in a strange city among even stranger people.

 _Will you still visit?_ Hux does not ask - can’t, because he doesn’t actually want to know Dameron’s answer. And he’s afraid the answer might explain why Dameron still looks so sad, when he tucks the datapad back into his jacket and slips from the room when he thinks Hux is sleeping.

-

When Finn and Poe tumble in through the front door it is with a flurry of snowflakes and a flush of laughter. And bags. So many bags.

“There’s a storm coming,” Finn breathes as if it’s the most dangerously exciting thing to happen to them in all their lives - Force forget the war they had all fought. “Gonna be a big one, locals say to get ready to buckle down for a few days at least, maybe a week.”

They’re loaded up with groceries and supplies - Hux realizes as they track melting snow into the kitchen and the clanging of cabinetry drowns out the weather report coming over the radio. Again, Hux’s spreadsheets adjust and account and determine he can not afford whatever extra expenses Finn and Poe have decided are necessary to their survival of this _snowstorm_.

Thinks maybe it’s time for him to leave. Four days is already longer than what Hux felt comfortable with. He was, after all, crashing their getaway, and their food will stretch longer with one less mouth to feed. But he thinks its too late to call a cab now, that surely the last transport out has already left in preparation of avoiding a snow-in.

But then Poe returns from the kitchen and sees the caf, pours himself a mug and settles onto the arm of the overstuffed chair Hux is sat in, and suddenly all Hux wants is to walk right out the front door and into the largest snow drift he can find.

He owes Poe an apology. Understands that as acutely as he now understands the shivers which have trembled to life under his skin. Instead, he brings his mug to his lips and sips at the warmth and ignores the way his hands tremble from something other than the cold.

“Is that _caf_?” Poe asks while he leans into Hux’s space, staring down like he’s looking at some rare and valuable treasure.

But he’s not. He’s staring at _Hux_ , and it’s all he can do to dip his chin in a nod and not choke when he swallows his next sip.

-

Five days.

Well, five days and three hours, Hux clarifies to himself, ignoring the sinking sensation in his stomach as he reluctantly slides his feet into the rubber-soled slippers the hospital has provided him. He’s been walking barefoot up until that point, and now he’s moved onto shoes. His balance will be different, the physiotherapist has explained (a marvel unto itself, that the woman is actually doing some shadow of her job - she's probably just eager to be rid of him). But Hux can’t help but think he’d be better off with a real pair of shoes rather than this not quite right substitute. Alas, he’s learned to work within the constrains of his position and this shortcoming on behalf of the medical staff comes as no surprise.

What does come as a surprise - what seems to _always_ come as a surprise, no matter how many times it happens - is when Dameron saunters into his room with a cup of caf.

And a cane.

“Starting early?” Dameron throws the question over his shoulder at the physiotherapist who shrugs, eyes never leaving her datapad. But that’s fine, because Hux knows Dameron doesn’t really care, he’s just making small talk, in the way he does with the entire staff. Sometimes Hux wonders if it’s not Poe’s daily presences that keeps the medical staff from dosing him to death in his sleep. Except that wouldn’t really explain the one time they tried.

“I have to leave early,” the woman explains, and then clarifies, “I’ll just cut now, since you’re here. You know the drill by now.”

“Sure thing, think I could get a job here? How many floor hours have I racked up, enough to skip the internship?”

But the nurse is already on her way out, eyes rolling as she abandons Hux to whatever scheme Dameron has up his sleeve. Because, he can’t help but wonder how Dameron expects him to walk with a cane when he can still barely get across the room with the walker.

“You’ll like this,” Dameron breathes as he leans close enough for Hux to taste the mint on his breath. Not caf, then. Tea, for him. Dameron has brought him a cane and a cup of tea.

Almost as if he knows Hux, now. In all the little ways no one else does, or ever has. Hux almost flushes with embarrassment, like this is some indiscretion he has allowed. But he doesn’t protest, doesn’t push away when Dameron approaches. Is in fact breathless when Dameron moves the walker aside to take its place.

His hands, when they grip Hux’s, are incredible- _incredibly_ warm.

“Stand up?” Dameron says it like Hux has a choice, like he is not at Dameron’s very whim each and every time he barges into his room like this.

“Your faith in me in appalling,” Hux mutters with a flush.

“Naw, you already proved that wrong.” _When you turned spy. Saved the Galaxy. Saved my life._ All left unsaid but hanging there bloated between them.

As if standing was not already difficult, it becomes near impossible after that. Even despite his injuries: a shattered foot and shin for a right leg, and a badly-healed blaster wound to his left’s thigh, Hux knows he is a mess. Dameron doesn’t seem to care, however. And Hux can’t help but think he is walking them not towards a cup of tea but something far more final, something Hux is not strong enough for, not yet, and that when he eventually does fall, he does not want to take Dameron with him.

But, selfishly, Hux grips his hands hard. Uses the leverage Dameron offers to haul himself to a shaky balance. Holds his breath as he teeters in place, standing only because of the fearsome grip he has on Poe’s fingers.

Carefully, Dameron loosens that hold, feathers his fingers light underneath Hux’s palms, so only this tentative connection between them is left.

And then he removes them, leaving Hux as he is, balanced not as precariously as he expected - surprisingly steady, as if Dameron still has a grip on him.

“Well would you look at that,” Dameron teases - no, he _encourages_. “You’ve been holding out on me, Hugs. If you want that Taurine tea you’re gonna have to get it yourself.”

“You found Taurine tea?” Hux takes a step, realizes what he’s done - what _Dameron_ has done, and then flushes with something between anger and shame and amusement, “you awful man. You think this will get me to walk?”

Dameron is laughing though, taking a step back so Hux has to take a step forward to close the distance.

“I dunno, seems to be working,” Dameron grins, and it’s beautiful. Dameron is beautiful. His smile, his voice, the faith he has that Hux can do these impossible things like live and heal and walk and re-enter the world as a free man.

“I hate you,” sputters indignant, but his own smile is there, smothered between the press of his lips, slipping between his steps, “you’re nothing but a-” and then Hux makes the mistake of gesturing at Dameron, and the room tilts at an unnatural angle, because Hux is finally _falling_ -

Dameron catches him. He’s there before Hux’s breath can fully leave his lungs, let alone his body hit the floor.

His arms are warm. Warmer than his hands.

But not nearly as warm as his laugh.

Hux is steady now, has his feet under him again, so that he isn’t careening towards the floor like a ship through atmo. He should push away. It would be easy. He’s not trapped here. He has no reason to be here. Just like _Dameron_ has no reason to be here. Never did. Not from the very start.

Instead, he leans onto the security, the safety he finds in the warm hold of Dameron’s arms. It feels forbidden, like something he does not deserve - has not yet earned.

“What am I?” Dameron breathes as he holds Hux to him, his arms wrapped gentle, not tight, only firm.

And Hux feels himself flushing from the tenuous thoughts that he wont allow break his surface. A cloying potential that rears sharp and biting against his gloom. Dameron’s question hangs untethered between them, and Hux is saying far too much with his silence.

Says far more with his words.

“Poe-” it slips out before he can stop it.

Poe. Not Dameron, not anymore.

This is Poe.

He’s shivering. Despite Poe’s warmth, Hux is shivering apart in his arms. His hands, where they grip Poe’s shirt, have twisted tightly enough that Hux realizes he is here of his own volition now. This isn’t Poe anymore, this is all Hux - an indulgence he dares take for himself, heedless of the consequences. Poe is kind. And Poe is generous. Hux is neither. He is cruel and selfish, and he has taken advantage of Poe. Drawn him into his unlikely orbit, like the vast gravity well at the center of a black hole.

So when Poe’s cheek brushes his, when his lips follow, tracing out the shape of Hux’s jaw from the path they take to his mouth, Hux almost lets him. Almost swallows Poe whole, where he can tear him apart with all the awful things he harbors inside the deepest reaches of himself.

Poe doesn’t deserve that.

Before Poe can kiss him, Hux shoves him away.

“Stop,” he rasps. “Don’t touch me,” he forces into a snarl, rather than a sob.

Poe stumbles away with the force of his shove, eyes wide and hands empty but still lifted in a futile grasp, as Hux’s own momentum takes him backwards, takes him careening towards the floor like that ship through atmo - like the Steadfast tumbling from Exegol’s sky.

Hux lands with a loud crash. He’s struck the walker, pulled it down atop him while his head meets the edge of the bed in a dampened _thunk_. He makes a sound - he knows he does - hears it distantly above the tremulous voice of a nurse who has come running.

It’s her hands which touch Hux next. And it’s her face that greets him when he looks up from where he has watched Poe’s boots retreat from the room.

“Are you alright?” the nurse asks like she cares.

She doesn’t care. The only person who has ever cared was Poe.

And now he's gone.

Hux wants to laugh. Hux wants to scream. He wants to cry and he wants to run after Poe and tell him to wait. Tell him he just needs more time. But Hux can hardly stand, let alone run. And it’s all he can do to allow the nurse to help him back onto his bed, to right his walker and replace his slippers on the floor.

Across the room, the tea grow cold, but it is Hux who can’t stop shivering.

-

“I’m sorry.”

Hux has cornered Dameron in the hallway leading to their bedroom. Poe has just left the fresher and his breath has that cool minty tang that it gets after he’s brushed his teeth.

Hux only recognizes it from one other time in his life. A memory that has never left him - never will.

“Hugs, you don’t have to apologize to me,” Poe says it kindly, like he understands. But he doesn’t, or at least, if he does, then maybe Hux is really just setting himself up for another blow to his chest.

“I do,” Hux continues despite the fact that he has backed Poe into the doorframe of their darkened room. Beyond the glass of the window overlooking his bed, he can see how much snow has fallen. It’s begun to crest the sill in a gentle wave of gray, will soon maybe drift so high as to cover the window completely. “I owe you an apology for this morning, and…”

Poe cocks his head, shifts his weight.

Releases a warm minty breath.

“…and before.”

Poe says nothing. He watches Hux with a careful attention, a searching compulsion. Hux lets him. Let’s him see him as he is, now. Just like he had seen him before, exposed and scared, broken by so much more than the damage to his body.

Poe is the only person who has ever seen Hux. Really seen him, in all the honest ways that matter. Hux can’t imagine anyone other than Poe seeing him like this - like _that_. So when Poe reaches to brush a touch to his wrist, Hux lets it happen, and he hopes it’s enough for Poe to hear the words he still can not bring himself to speak, but for reasons far different from those before.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry too.” And Hux doesn’t think Poe has anything to be sorry for, but if there is one thing he now understands about Poe Dameron, it’s that he’ll always think he has something to apologize for.

It’s what had brought him to Hux’s bedside, after all. The only reason, Hux had once believed.

He doesn’t know what to believe, now. But he knows what he wants to believe.

He knows what he wants.

It’s Hux who leaves Poe like that, slumped against the doorframe, watching after Hux’s back like he has something more to apologize for.

-

There’s a hole in his chest that hadn’t been there before, and it has nothing to do with Pryde’s blaster.

Poe is gone. He had left, those five days ago, of course. Who wouldn’t after that disaster Hux created with the Taurine tea. But he had expected Poe to return. Maybe not that day, or the next, but certainly _today._

Because today is the day Hux is being released from the hospital.

And today is the day he would shed his name in favor of another’s - when his scale is wiped clean and he is unleashed on the Galaxy not as Armitage Hux, former General of the First Order, but as Arthur Huxley, a common civilian of the New Republic.

Across the room, Rose Tico speaks with his nurse. She has arrived with a hovercart, a simple contraption that would have been as much a relief as it was a shameful mark had Hux been presented with it a week ago.

Now, more than ever, he is determined to walk out of this place. And if Poe isn’t around to see that happen, then Hux will do it for himself. Realizes that’s what he should have been doing, all this time. Because Hux has always been alone. Will always be on his own. And that Poe Dameron had entered his life and made him feel something other than that bottomless loneliness should have made him mad.

Instead, Hux feels nothing but a deep aching loss.

“Ready to kick it?” Tico stands before him with the hovercart. To his left rests the cane Poe had brought him. It’s the only thing of Poe’s he's ever been given, and the only physical reminder he gets to keep, after his identity is abdicated and he is released to mundane anonymity.

“Yes.”

And then he stands, and with the help of the cane, he walks past the hovercart, Tico following on his heels as he heads for the lift on his own two functioning, if not graceful feet.

There is a cab waiting. Black and unassuming, Hux eyes it from his place on the curb, Tico a shadow beside him.

“Guess this is it,” she says as she holds a datapad out for him to take. “The cab will take you to the port, your tickets and itinerary are on this pad. There’s a contact on there too, in case you need help.”

“Do you know where I’m going?”

“Nope.” The ‘p’ popped when she said it, as casual as the rest of this encounter, but falling hard on Hux’s ears, like the pop of a slug thrower, a bullet to his already wounded chest. If Poe were here, this would feel like something momentous, something worth making a memory out of. Instead, all Hux wants is to crawl in that cab and never look back again. “Must be nice, leaving it all behind. Are you excited?”

It could have sounded cruel, but it only came out curious. Hux isn’t sure how he feels. Isn’t sure he even has names for the things he is feeling right then.

So when he says, “I’m relieved,” he doesn’t think he is lying, but he certainly isn’t telling the truth.

She closes the door for him once he is safely tucked into the back seat.

She doesn’t wave as the cab pulls away.

-

The snow has well and truly buried their cabin by the time Rey and Finn start on that night’s dinner. Rose is standing at the living area windows, marveling at the embankment of snow that has now drifted halfway up the double story transparisteel.

Hux is lounging on the loveseat again, taking advantage of its proximity to the fire in the hearth. Someone had pushed the ottoman to the corner to reach some shelves above the holoscreen where the owner of the cabin rental kept a stash of old movies, so he has propped his bad leg across the cushion beside him instead. The cold makes it ache, ache _more_ , Hux reluctantly acknowledges, as his hand works over the tightened muscle of his calf.

They’d lost holonet signal a few hours earlier, though the cabin is equipped with a comms tower that will outlast the deepest snow drifts. Rey had spoken with the owner earlier that morning, had been advised the cabin would be fine and that for their own safety they should stay where they were and that the extended time would not cost them a single credit more.

Hux figures the man’s insurance will cover the cost of their funerals if the cabin collapses with them inside it. Not that he is afraid of that happening. Not after last time.

Been there, done that.

Poe emerges from the kitchen with a fork in his fingers and before he even makes it halfway across the room Hux knows he’s heading for him.

“This is _so good_ ,” Poe breathes as his open palm hovers beneath the fork, ready to catch whatever bit of food he has speared at the edge. He’s knelt on the floor before Hux, body leaning in close while his hands lift in offering, and Hux has plenty of opportunity to think this through before his mouth falls open in invitation.

Like the spoon from yesterday, Poe slips the fork past his teeth with careful consideration.

Unlike yesterday, the fingers of his cupped palm brush under Hux’s chin, linger there, as Hux chews.

Stay after he swallows.

Where the cookie dough was sweet and tacky, this is salty and savory. Some sort of meat, tender where the fibers cling, warm and velvety where the fat spills over his tongue. Hux doesn’t think he’s had anything like it. Is sure he hasn’t, when Poe’s thumb brushes his lip to catch some grease his tongue had missed.

“Alright?” Poe asks a little breathlessly - a little _hopefully_ \- and it’s all Hux can do to nod his chin and not lean into Poe’s retreating touch. “Want some more?” And Hux thinks this is more of an apology than anything they’ve exchanged yet, an understanding in actions that speaks more truthfully than any sentence either could assemble. Poe’s smile is small, but bright, shining up at Hux like a tiny sun, and he feels so very warm. It’s then that Hux sees Rose watching him from where she stands sentinel at the windows.

Her lifted eyebrow says everything.

Hux turns back to Poe and nods his head for the second time, relieved that his blush does not bloom until Poe's back is turned and Rose's eyes have drifted back to the snow.

-

Tico discovers him by accident.

He’s been living on Coruscant for three months now. The little hovel of his apartment tucked away beneath the commercial towers of the north western hemisphere. This part of Coruscant is wet during the winter season, the heavy beat of its sun giving way to a muggy drizzle that saturates everything from Hux’s clothes to what feels like his very bones. Despite the cool humidity, Hux is shivering when he enters the cafe on the corner. He’s become something of a regular, if only because this is the single place around that carries Taurine tea.

It’s an indulgence. One he allows himself, mostly, because it’s one of the few he can afford.

It’s at this cafe, standing in line for the register, that a harshly whispered _Hux?_ wrenches through his body like a blaster to his head.

Despite the circumstances of their last meeting and subsequent parting, Hux knows Rose Tico more from Dameron’s stories than he does any personal interactions. They had encountered each other only once during the war, and only several times after…the last of which was the day he was discharged from the hospital.

Now, she stands behind him, arms balancing several bags of caf beans and face plastered thick with a grin.

“Oh my stars, it is _you,_ ” she breathes loudly, too loudly, by the upturned faces of the couple seated at the table adjacent to them.

Hux leans on his cane, head dropping to close the vast distance between him and Tico, as he murmurs, “Not here, it’s too close to home.” And then it’s his turn at the counter and Hux is limping out into the pall cast of gray light to await Tico under the cool damp wet of Coruscant’s winter.

She appears precisely two and a half minutes later (Hux isn’t counting, he just knows the cycle of the speeder light at the corner), caf beans packed into bags and grin tucked away in favor of a watery stare.

“You’re alright,” she says like she’s shocked. Like she expected to find Hux dead in a ditch rather than alive in what was essentially some city planet’s gutter.

“Of course I’m alright,” said like he doesn’t understand her worry. Not after the last time they had seen one another, when Hux had considered himself lucky that he had departed the medical center under the understanding that he would never see anyone he knew ever again.

Not that he knows Rose Tico. So Hux doesn't understand why he felt warm.

“So this is where they placed you? Seems weird, right? Have you been recognized?”

Hux understands the logic. The people of Coruscant are accustomed to every type of notoriety. Hardly anyone gives a passing glance to a familiar famous face, let alone a man who was reported to be in exile.

But Hux isn’t sure if he is supposed to be speaking with Tico, let alone in any sort of contact with his former life. He had only glanced at the datapad Poe had showed him all those months ago, when Hux hadn’t envisioned his future further ahead than each subsequent day.

Days that had been spent with Poe…

His mood sours as quickly as it had warmed. Still, something tells him this chance opportunity is something more.

“I live around the block, would you like to come up to my apartment for tea?” He asks.

Tico’s acceptance feels more welcome than Hux thought he was ready to admit.

-

Hux cleans up after dinner, that night. It’s all he can do to keep from limping out to the couch and passing out in his spot, as Rose has begun referring to it. Instead, he plunges his hands in the scalding water and scrubs dishes with the same temerity he once applied to building super weapons. Finn watches him wearily, cloth in hand as he polishes the cutlery Hux places on the drying rack.

“Have you spoken with him yet?” Drops casual, like Hux is Finn’s friend and not his colleague. Maybe there isn’t a difference, but in that moment, Hux is willing to split hairs.

“No.” Because beyond his botched apology he and Poe have hardly exchanged any words. Silence has pervaded each of their interactions and the only void Poe has tried to fill is that of Hux’s stomach.

“We talked about this,” says Finn with the same exacerbation he used sometimes at the center, when Hux felt as much a project as he did one of its volunteers. “He’s not going to make the first move, not after-”

“I know what happened last time,” Hux spits, and thank the stars for the steamy water that explains why his face has warmed so pink. But Finn doesn’t deserve this side of him, and he thinks maybe he doesn’t either, not anymore. “The opportunity hasn’t presented itself.”

“He told me he apologized, that’s a start,” Finn slips his hand out and turns off the still running water. Hux stares down at the swirl of soap that spirals down the drain.

“ _I_ apologized,” Hux clarifies, though Finn is giving him that look, the one he uses with his most difficult cases. “Poe has nothing to apologize for.” Despite whatever Finn and Rose and Rey might think and whatever advantage they claim Poe took of him, all that time before.

“Armitage,” Finn says it softly, kindly, “ _You_ have nothing to apologize for.”

Hux snorts, he can’t help it.

“Okay-” Finn’s grin is infectious, despite how he tries to keep a straight face, “-okay, just, maybe not to Poe.”

Hux stares down at his red hands as he dries them on the cloth Finn has handed him, thinking through his emotions in the same way he directs his group sessions, “I am having trouble approaching him.” Not because he is afraid of Poe’s rejection, but because he’s afraid of his own happiness. Finn inclines his head, waits for him to continue, and Hux knows what he has to say, “I am having trouble accepting what I want.”

“That’s alright,” and somehow Finn is again the unlikely friend Hux never thought he needed, or deserved. “Feelings are hard, even the positive ones. But you’re allowed to be happy, Hux. You know that, now.”

Finn leaves shortly after that. He can hear Rose and Rey’s feet stomping down the stairs, the whoosh of the balcony door as the two head for the hot tub which has miraculously remained un-buried due to the awning of the deck. Hux has no desire to strip down naked and lounge in a pot of boiling water, despite how warm it may make him feel (or the sink he has happily submerged his hands into). But he would be lying to himself if his eyes didn’t linger on Poe’s bared chest when he pokes his head into the kitchen to ask if he needs help.

“I’m alright, thank you,” Hux assured from his place leaning against the counter. He doesn’t hide his flush - can’t hide it - not when Poe is as attractive as he’s ever been, all warm skin and worked muscles. It’s not much different from how he looked earlier that day, when Hux had cornered him outside the fresher, or earlier yet, when Poe had caught him staring at his bag, except this time Poe looks at him with an open curiosity that hadn’t been there yet before.

Poe doesn’t ask if he’ll join them. Knows the answer as well as Hux does. Whatever unlikely relationship he has fallen into with Poe’s friends does not include such intimacies as baring his physical scars, even if it’s his emotional ones which cause him the most trouble. But when Hux eventually makes his way back to his spot on the couch, leg propped on the seat beside him because the ottoman has been commandeered for an abandoned Dejarik game, Hux closes his eyes to sounds of their laughter, the easy cadence of their voices, and for the first time since he arrived, lets his own worries slip away.

He falls asleep quickly, the sound of laughter echoing in his head.

-

“I’m not sure that is a good idea,” Hux says from his place at the small kitchen table.

Rose sits across from him, caf in hand. She’s brought him his order of Taurine tea, saving Hux the trip down the four flights of stairs to the place on the corner. His leg had been doing better, mostly, until the lift in his building had stopped working and he’d had to start making the daily trips by foot. And while the exercise has certainly done his body some good, he can never predict the days his leg will act up - when walking becomes difficult and the stairs threaten insurmountable in the face of whatever mundane task he needs to take care of.

Today hasn’t been one of those days, but Rose had called ahead and offered, and Hux had only briefly considered saying no.

Now he can’t help wishing he had.

“It’s a great idea,” Rose insists as she spins her mug in a slow steady circle. It grinds strangely atop the plasti of his table, but the sound is a distraction from the tangent his thoughts want to take, the one that would surely take him nowhere good. “Finn could really use the help, and the people in the program could use a familiar face. You could get through to them, in a way no one else can.”

“I’m not a counselor,” Hux clarifies, as if neither of them knew what he actually is. He is more likely to be one of their cases than he is one of the people helping rehabilitate anyone.

“That’s what would make this work. They need someone who understands them, not from a mental health perspective, but from shared life experience. Finn can only do so much, since his experience in the Order would have been way different from yours. And it’s not the troopers who struggle the most in the program, it’s the officers. Whatever conditioning you all went through was lightyears more advanced than the common soldier’s.”

It wasn’t conditioning, Hux wants to say - remains silent instead. It was his life. It was his father, his culture, his very legacy.

“And what of the witness protection program?”

Rose snorts, rolls her eyes, “Yeah, like anyone doesn’t know exactly who you are.”

“I thought that was the point-”

“The point was to keep you from walking around saying I’m General Hux of the First Order, destroyer of the Hosnian system, and I would like to buy three cases of Taurine tea because I’m not bitter enough already.”

“You shouldn’t make jest,” he says, and then, “I’m not bitter.”

Rose only grins, tongue poking out from behind her teeth as it tends to when he says something particularly amusing, “You’re the most bitter person I know, it’s why I like you.”

Hux frowns, because it keeps him from smiling. “Maybe it’s from all the tea.”

-

Hux is woken by the sensation of the cushion dipping beside him, of a weight settling where one had never been, and he sinks slowly towards it the way gravity pulls the snow towards the planet's surface: gentle, easy - inevitable. Beside him, Poe has settled, face turned up to Finn who is saying something that makes Poe chuckle, something Hux blearily tries to make out but can’t, because his head is still foggy and Rose and Rey’s laughs are too loud.

And Poe’s hands are too distracting where they touch his leg - in how they place it atop Poe’s lap so his ankle hooks over his substantial thigh, like the two were made to fit. And when Poe’s fingers move over the arch of his foot, digging in with a gentle pressure, following the scars to their sources like their paths aren’t buried beneath skin and sinew and thought alike, Hux finds himself relaxing in a way he has never been able to, before. Like his body has been one step ahead of his mind for so long, seeking something Hux would never allow it - until now.

Finn is propped on the armrest beside Poe, his smile wide but his eyes slipping to catch his, and Hux knows if he indicated, Finn would make Poe stop. Hux doesn’t. He turns his head so his cheek rests against the back of the loveseat and he watches Poe from half-sleep eyes. Because while his heart might be racing and his stomach may be somersaulting, Hux is ready to admit this is everything he wants. Everything he has wanted, for so long it hurts more than his leg ever could.

Finn says goodnight when Rey gathers him into her arms, and the smile she gives Hux is knowing in a way that has nothing to do with her Force. But it is Rose’s quick kiss to the top of Hux’s head that speaks volumes more. It’s protective and affectionate all the same, because of anyone who knew his history with Poe, she was who knew the most.

“Goodnight you two,” she says as she heads up the stairs, fingers wiggling in an affectation of a wave. And then he and Poe are alone - just them and the fire in the hearth and the heat of Poe’s hands on his foot.

Hux thinks about kissing Poe. Thinks about what it would feel like, to have his lips touch his - the taste of his mouth - the warmth of his breath. But he lets the moment idle, content to have Poe’s attention on him in this way: fingers finding their way through his pain, while his eyes find their way over his thoughts. Poe watches him quietly. It feels content, as natural as if they had done this all before. They had, in many ways. Not much of this was new - not when they’d already gone through the motions. Had already allowed themselves to find one another, to catch themselves in the gravity of the other.

The only difference - the only difference that matters - is that Hux no longer feels like he will tear them both apart when their orbits finally do align.

“Ready?”

 _For bed,_ Poe leaves out, when Hux has begun drifting off yet again, and Poe’s fingers have strayed from his foot to his hand. Poe traces Hux’s knuckles, a slow meandering touch that sets his heart aflutter.

"Yes," comes out quiet, but Poe hears, and he smiles.

-

Hux observes the small group of men and women around him with the same sense of engagement he once used to command a Star Destroyer. Former officers, the people he is to lead in a discussion hardly looked like members of the Order, not anymore. Hux supposes they must be thinking the same of him: Armitage Hux, once fearsome General of the First Order, now unlikely therapist, counselor, and cripple, to top it all.

“Thank you for coming today,” he says, still unsure if anyone is listening. The vacant expression in one woman’s eyes - former Captain, going by her file - speaks volumes more than any words she might utter. “I only want to remind you that this is entirely voluntary, and everything said here is considered private and confidential. Unless I believe your life or the life of someone else is in danger, anything you say will remain with the group.”

A few nod, several more glance up at him, eyes meeting his for the briefest moment of contact before drifting to their laps, or over his shoulder. The Captain dips her chin in a sharp nod, something that feels more like a salute with how severe she moves, but Hux resists the urge to mutter _at ease_. He is not their commander, not anymore. Now he is something far more intimidating.

“I’d like to open our first discussion up for questions you may have for me. Sharing our stories is important and I am sure many of you have questions about the role I played in the Order and the events leading up to its dissolvement.” Finn had advised him on how to approach these conversations, had warned him that he would need to be as open about his experiences as he expected of his group.

But where Hux expected silence, and an uncomfortable one at that, the Captain speaks up without hesitation, “Is it true that you were the spy?”

“It is true,” Hux confirms, without hesitation.

“Why?” the Captain snaps, then quickly amends, “Sir.”

“You may call me Hux,” he says as he shifts in his chair. Around him, all eyes have lifted, the combined weight of their gazes dragging heavy. There is no accusation in the weight, however - but a curiosity, a genuine desire to know the answer to a question not even the Republic had asked. “The reason I began spying is different than what compelled me to continue. When Kylo Ren assumed command as the Supreme Leader, I believed his leadership would have brought the First Order to ruin.

“But it wasn’t until I discovered that the First Order was the design of a Sith lord that I realized everything I believed in my whole life had been a lie, and there was no future where the Order could actually bring peace to the Galaxy. And that was why I continued spying.” Hux met the Captain’s eyes, leveraging the monotonous expression he had worn for so much of his life. He does not think these people need his emotions, so much as they need to hear the surety of his words. Because, he does not regret spying. It is one of the few things in his life, at this point, that he does not regret.

Silence befalls the group, and Hux feels himself relax, despite what maybe should feel awkward. Hux does not feel awkward. In fact, he feels rather among people who understand him better than most.

“Why did the Republic let you go?” When the question comes, Hux does feel himself react. He smothers it quickly, but he has been seen, he knows, when the weight of their combined attention goes from heavy to smothering.

“I do not know,” Hux answers truthfully. “Certainly I would not have survived a trial. I can only assume it was my work as a spy they found valuable, enough to overlook my work with Starkiller.”

Someone makes a sound, sharp with air, and then, “Starkiller- how did- how have you-” it was the Captain. “How can you sleep, at night?”

Hux watches the woman as she barely meets his eye - he sees not an accusation, but a desperation. A need to move beyond a personal trauma he knows not the details of, but certainly the shape.

“I don’t sleep well, if that is what you mean,” Hux approachs cautiously, examining his own thoughts as he goes. Starkiller is as complicated now as it had been back then, even if the knots are tied differently. “Starkiller Base killed many people- _I_ killed many people. But I understand the person I was then is not who I am any longer. And I understand the reasons I fired Starkiller Base are as flawed as the problems I thought needed solving.

“At the time, firing Starkiller felt necessary. I believed it would end not just our war, but all wars, herald in an era of peace based off of the threat of Starkiller’s capabilities. That level of destruction should only need to ever be used once, as a deterrent. It was never mean to be a solution. At least, that is what I believed. Now, I realize that the powers behind the Order would never have stopped with just the Hosnian system. And the peace I sought would not be a true peace, but rather inaction born of fear, and a breeding ground for insurrection.”

“But all those people,” the Captain insists, “you don’t think about all those lives you took? Their deaths don’t haunt you?”

_If they didn't_ _, I would not be sitting here._

“Not in the way you might think. I do not blame myself for Starkiller, despite what role I played. Because the person I was then is not who I am today. But I have empathy for that man, I understand him, and I understand his intentions were not destruction for the sake of destruction, but a means to an end he believed in. Fanaticism is dangerous, in that it teaches us to utilize whatever methods we can for the sake of a goal. I understand now, how flawed that approach is. It is why we are all here, and not living well-adjusted lives amongst the citizens of the New Republic. The real work is done during the journey. You can not skip it. There are no short cuts to what we want.”

The words hammer home as the Captain looks at him with something other than desperation. Understanding, maybe. Or hope. The chord he has struck rings true with these words he has never spoken, but has known the shape of, the weight of, in the same way he knew the shape of Poe’s chest beneath his hands when he had pushed him away, and the weight of his body descending as it struck the ground.

He still is on his journey. Maybe Poe had offered him a short cut, but Hux knows now, he still has work to do. And what he wants, he does not deserve - has not earned.

At least, not yet.

-

The nightmares return that night. Scathing things that drag across his mind like the scratch of sand paper, wearing away at the buttresses that safely hold his psyche aloft, like how a storm weathers away at a mountain, or the ocean at a cliffside. He wakes with a rush of breath, a jolt of his body that collects in his stiff neck. Where the blankets had covered him, now his sweaty skin lays exposed, but Hux can’t find comfort in the cold brush of the window’s draft, because despite the sweat, his body shivers - uncontrollable tremors that make using his fingers difficult. So he clings to the blanket and keeps his eyes open as he fights the nightmare that tugs at him still, tenacious in its determination to pull him back under.

“Hux?” Whispers soft, and it takes Hux too long to realize it is not the nightmare calling to him, but Poe.

They had gone to sleep hours earlier, after Poe had helped him up from the couch and to his bed like it wasn’t just the room they were sharing, but a life. Now, he lays on his side in his own bed, a scant three meters that separate them, dark eyes almost glowing with the refracted light of the moon off the snow.

The drift had reached halfway up the window, in the end. Now the cabin lay in frozen submersion, the storm waylaid for another day, while the eye hovers over their tiny cabin in some resort town on a planet Hux hardly knew the name of. And yet, somehow, Hux does not feel lost as he expected. In fact feels even less so, when he turns onto his side to face Poe head on, their bodies mirrored, their orbits crossed.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” says Hux finally, after he has let his eyes wander over Poe’s face long enough to know he is fully awake now, as awake as himself.

“Was it another nightmare?” Poe asks, ignoring his apology. It was a habit, one he is unsure if he will ever be able to shake. As if all these small apologies could amount into the large one he really wishes he could say, but knows will never be heard, not when everyone who needs to hear it is already dead. “Wanna talk about it?”

He does, and he doesn’t. Doesn’t know how to explain to Poe the things that haunt him. Because it’s not just the obvious transgressions that crawl through his mind during its weakest - but things so deeply buried he doesn’t have the words to name them. So instead he releases the hold on his sigh, and says, “I’ve always had nightmares.” It’s true - his sleepless nights had begun before Starkiller. “Mostly they’re impressions, or something stalking me. Sometimes I will be standing in the middle of a room, facing a closed door, and I know when it opens, whatever is on the other side is going to kill me, but the door is the only way out of the room, so if I stay I will die anyway.”

“Never would have pegged you as the indecisive type,” Poe says with a smile and a shift. His blanket is tucked under his arm where it rests, fingers smoothing over the expanse of empty mattress in front of him, almost as if he were beckoning Hux into his bed. Hux swallows, resists the urge to close the distance, to climb into Poe’s bed and fill that empty space.

Instead, he says, “And I never would have pegged you as a dream interpreter.”

It makes Poe laugh, and the sound fills the room with a warmth Hux could almost physically feel.

“Does the door ever open?” Poe asks, eyes holding his as surely as his smile.

“Yes,” Hux breathes, “And when it does, it sucks me out of the room and into darkness. I must die, because I always wake up at that point.”

Poe is quiet for some time, long enough that Hux would have thought him asleep again, if not for the calm reflection of his eyes as they watch him.

“I have a recurring dream where I’m chasing a TIE down in Black One, and it keeps evading me, out-maneuvering me, until the last moment when I get a lucky shot and take it out, only to discover the person piloting the TIE was someone I knew. Someone I-” Poe cuts off, breaks eye contact for the briefest moment, as his eyes slip shut and he goes to some private place Hux wants to see, “-someone who died during the war. A lot of times its someone I got killed, one of my pilots, or someone from my crew. Sometimes its people who survived though, and I’m not sure what that means. But even if they were strangers, all of them are just trying to get away from me, and I’m still trying to shoot them down.”

“You have to defeat the bad guys, at all cost,” Hux says simply, like it’s not the most obvious observation.

“Yeah, but what if I'm the bad guy, and that's why they're all trying to get away?” murmurs Poe, sadly. And Hux can’t help but be the one to break eye contact, then.

Silence stretches, filling the space in a way Hux wants to push away - to replace with something else, something warmer, something a little less heavy.

Hux thinks Poe must have fallen asleep again, but then the rustle of blankets rushes soft, and the pad of Poe’s bare feet hitting the ground breaks the silence. Poe is trying to be quiet, but the cabin is creaky, and the silence too thin, and the dim light from the hallway too loud when Poe opens their door and slips out from the room.

He’s using the fresher, or getting a glass of water - something to explain the way time runs so slow, thickening like the silence with every passing minute Poe does not return.

-

He’ll bruise, he always does.

His father had pointed that out, all those years ago when Hux had been nothing but a thin slip of a boy and nearly as useless. He’d gotten into a fight with one of the other children from the academy. A schoolyard brawl that took on that same insidious thread of _to the death_ that seemed to infect all of his childhood memories. His upbringing had left very little between simply surviving and thriving, and as Hux sat on the little couch in Finn’s office next to Rey, he was still having trouble differentiating between the two.

“He sure got you good.” Rey is careful where she applies the bacta to his split lip, eyes roving the still shadowy imprint of the desk against his cheek that will eventually turn into a purpling bruise.

“It surprised him as much as me. I do not believe the attack was intentional.” Truthfully, Hux thought he probably deserved it. It was not often his discussions turned so personal, or focused on a single person’s story, but the Lieutenant had been quiet for all the weeks he had been attending his sessions, and today Hux had finally got him talking. That he had been hiding more than the emotions toiling away in his mind had been a surprise to all of them.

“Still amazes me that all the Force sensitives weren't discovered by Snoke.” Finn is leaning against his desk, arms crossed and frown in place. “I’ll talk to him, Rey too. If he can throw a desk across the room he’s bound to be more than sensitive.”

Maybe. Or maybe it was just Hux who inspired such violence from Force users, like some sort of twisted amplifier, where they can’t help but feel the urge to hurt him. Except, that would not explain Rey, or how she so carefully maneuvered around him, cognizant of his unease, respectful of his boundaries. He doesn’t trust her, but he also does not find himself wary of her presence - and that, certainly, must mark her different.

When Finn asks, “Do you want me to pull him from your group?” Hux tears away from his thoughts with a jerk that also pulls him away from Rey’s touch. She lifts her hands in swift acquiescence, bottom lip bitten between her teeth as she leans away. He gives her a look he hopes is apologetic and not apathetic, but as guilt shutters her features, he thinks he got it wrong. Even after hours staring at himself in the mirror in practiced emotion, his expressions are still not often interpreted correctly - the only person who had ever really been able to read him had been Poe.

He thinks about Poe a lot lately. Not that he has ever stopped, but something about working at the center, surrounded by these people, Poe's friends, makes him feel as if Poe should be here instead of him. Like Poe is some critical component, the missing piece of a puzzle, while Hux’s shape is one that still can’t find its place.

Except, he enjoys the discussions he leads. They make him feel as if he is making a difference in the way spying never did. That he can help the people he betrayed in this small way is not something Hux takes for granted. And he has no desire to give up on someone just because his history with the Force has reared unfortunate to his surface.

He brushes his fingers over the soon-to-be bruise while shaking his head. “No, that is not necessary.”

Finn watches him quietly, before nodding. “Alright, then we’ll talk to him, and you tell me if he has any other incidents. Your safety is our priority Hux, same goes for all of our counselors.”

Hux can’t find it in himself to say thank you, not yet, but he thinks Finn can hear him when he lets Rey close with the bacta again.

-

When Hux wakes the next morning, it is to the sing-song melody of Rose and Rey yowling one of those infernal radio jingles. Their voices pitch high over the whine of the blender, and Hux nearly covers his head with his pillow and smothers himself into a sleep so deep he hopes he might never wake.

Poe never came back. His bed is rumpled in the same shape he left it, blankets pulled back haphazard so they hide where his jacket drapes over the foot. Hux doesn’t know what to make of that. Wonders what it was he said wrong, or what memory their talk of dreams had dredged up. Something had not sat well with Poe, and Hux has no doubt that something has everything to do with him.

His cane wobbles beneath his hold as he makes his way into the kitchen, passing the glittering tree alight in the corner which has somehow grown more bloated with gifts. Curiosity has gotten the best of him after nearly twenty standard minutes of laying awake and shivering beneath the drafty window, and the saying of _if you can_ _’t beat them, join them_ holds a far different meaning in his life now than it did three years ago.

Rey greets him with a squeal and a _Happy Life Day_ before sliding her arms around his waist in a rare, but not entirely unwelcome hug. It’s hardly comfortable for him to accept her touch, but it is something they’ve worked on. A boundary he very much wanted pushed, if only because he understands this to be Rey’s way of communication, in the same way Rose’s was her sarcasm, and Finn’s his motherly concern. Hux is still unsure what his method of communication is, feels there must be a clue in how he does not communicate well - but supposes he has made some progress, if only because he no longer pushes away the people he wants in his life, not anymore.

But then the memory of Poe’s absence rings a reminder, and Hux thinks he still has more work to do.

Rose’s grin is a welcome distraction - something straight from a comedy holo as she pours an innocuous red liquid into the glasses she has lined up across the counter. It slogs like half-congealed blood and Hux is pulling a face before he can stop himself.

“Try it before you judge, I think you’ll like it,” Rose encourages as she slides a glass across the surface. The tinny squeak turns his twisted face into a cringe and Rey giggles from where she still has her arms around his waist.

“It’s called a bloody mary,” she explains as she takes her own glass from Rose’s outstretched arm. “Tomato juice, some lemon, garlic, and salt. Oh, and vodka!”

“Don’t worry, Hux, I made yours virgin, just like you,” goads Rose with a wink as she and Rey clink glasses.

“I’m not a virgin,” Hux clarifies just as Poe chooses that moment to make his appearance. The lifted eyebrow he levels on Hux turns him a shade red that rivals the liquid in his glass.

He sucks it down with fervent rancor as Rose is reduced to guffawing laughter, tears glittering like the stupid lights on that stupid tree. It’s salty, the texture strange, thick on his tongue, a little bitter, and it’s no wonder Rose thinks he’ll like it.

He does. He likes it enough to take another, slower, sip. One he can savor, while he thinks no one is watching.

Except, Poe is watching. Has not stopped watching him since he entered the room. His attention roves down Hux’s body from where he leans against the counter, leaving trails of heat in their wake as he devours Hux with his eyes. And whatever uncomfortable complication from the previous evening had Poe fleeing his presence evaporates in that moment, as Poe’s eyes settle over where Rey has herself tucked into his side, lips pursing at the edge of his glass in a slow sip, almost as if he were wishing it was him in her place. Hux turns away, has to, as he feels his face flame red again, an expression that must be easily read, he thinks - whether by Poe or anyone else who cared to look.

Because the morbid reality is that Hux wishes it were Poe tucked into his side, too.

-

“Good news, Hux!” Rose is closing the distance quickly, her shortened stature and increased step count hardly more than an outlet for an abundance of energy Hux has never had. He stands his ground wearily, leaning into the support of his cane when his foot starts to ache, and Rose’s momentum appears to be taking her directly towards him, with hardly a chance of stopping.

She does stop, of course. It’s not as if she would actual bowl him over like the pins in that game she is always playing on her datapad. Still, Hux holds his tea aloft as if to keep it out of harms way, as Rose slows into place beside him, grin wide on her face.

“Whatever has gotten into you?” Hux asks as politely as he can, wary of whatever news could be so good that he needs to hear about it.

“Your captain, she’s finally been placed, got the offer just now.”

“With the non-profit on Naboo? That is wonderful news.”

“Yeah, the employers said she nailed all five of her interviews, they’re super excited to bring her on board.” Rose grins like it's her who just got offered her dream job, rather than a former captain of the First Order. And even after six months of moments like these at the center, Hux still is not accustomed to the easy way these people share joy with one another, spreading it, like a virus, or maybe a plague.

Hux tries not to feel self-conscious when he finds himself infected. “She must be pleased, she’s been interviewing for weeks.”

“Yeah, well, I think once I told Poe about her he was able to get the board to move on the vote. But I waited, like you asked, she definitely got the job on her own. He’s speaking to her now, wanted to give the offer in person, do you want to go say congrats?”

And all the joy Hux had felt evaporates in that moment, as Rose’s words strike something within him that Hux has long since thought he’d buried, but now rears ugly and awful.

Poe is _here_?

And then a door across the hall opens, and through it comes Finn before a familiar figure fills the threshold, all dark hair and dark eyes and warmed over skin, and in Hux’s hand, his tea cup heats his fingers hot, the paper collapsing a little with the strength of his grip, before it slips free.

Hot tea splashes across the floor as Hux takes a step back, and then another. Freezing when Poe turns and meets his eyes, as shocked as Hux- as frozen in that moment from before, when their orbits had crossed treacherously close, only to spin away, each left as unsteady on their axis as the other.

He staggers away as quickly as he can, cane slipping in the spilled tea as steam curls around his retreating feet. He does not think as he flees - as he runs away from something he is still not ready for, even after almost a year of wanting so much more.

Hux can’t be here. He can’t do this, not now - maybe not ever.

It is Finn who finds him back in his classroom, seated alone within the circle of empty chairs, cane balanced over his thighs beneath where his head is hung. When Finn takes the seat beside him, he barely flinches - but then Finn's hand touches his arm, and Hux can’t help but break.

“Forgive me,” he breathes, hating the way his voice shakes. “I just need a few minutes.”

“You’re going to take however much time you need,” Finn insists, “and then you’re going to tell me everything, okay?”

“Okay,” he says, he _affirms_. Then, “Thank you.”

Finn watches him closely, the expression on his face open, a little painful, as if Finn can feel what he’s feeling without the words of an explanation. And maybe he can - through the Force - but it could also just be Hux, and his inability to keep himself put together when it comes to Poe. But Finn is not Poe. Finn is, technically, his superior, despite the voluntary nature of his position at the center. So when he says, “Of course, Armitage, what else are friends for?” Hux isn’t quite sure what to make of it.

Because despite Rose and Rey and Finn, Hux doesn’t think he’s ever had a friend before. Thought maybe Poe had been one, until his heart had told him he was something more - something that had frightened him because of what he risked destroying, and Hux had pushed it all away for the sake of not just his own safety, but Poe’s.

And when he tells all this to Finn, he listens with a tilt to his head, a purse to his lips, and a softening of his eyes that speaks volumes to the work he has achieved at the center, where no one is too broken to be fixed, let alone a former general of the First Order who has killed billions, and is desperately afraid of destroying one more.

-

The reason for the early morning festivities reveals itself in the form of Life Day. A Wookie tradition that had long ago been commandeered by the rest of the Galaxy. Regardless of Life Day being the nature of his invitation to this cabin, Hux has only a passing impression of what the event signifies: mostly as an economic commodification of familial relationships, where individuals gather together to celebrate with food and drinks and, apparently, an abundance of gift giving.

Hux is seated in his spot, knees bent so his feet are planted on the ground, because the ottoman has been utilized as a serving tray of cookies though it is only 10am standard, and the cushion beside Hux is occupied by Rey. There is no way Hux will drape his leg across her lap, not even playfully, no matter how much progress they have made or how the limb aches - _throbs_ , actually - the cold having finally seeped into the joints.

On the floor, Poe is busy plucking gifts out from under the tree, passing them out with a teasing flourish so each recipient can make a production out of unwrapping whatever surprise hides beneath the too gaudy paper. He is wearing a sweater that is, somehow, even more gaudy than the wrapping. A colorful green thing with a BB unit that looks disturbingly similar to the real thing, unique paint job and all, and Hux can’t help but wonder if that had been a gift too - maybe from some previous Life Day where he was safe aboard a Star Destroyer hidden away amongst the stars.

Hux had not known about the gifts, or at least, not in he capacity that he was also supposed to provide them. And he supposes Rose kept that secret for a reason, knowing something of his living expenses and lack of disposable income, while also probably terrified of what Hux might chose to give as gifts - because it certainly would not have been these ridiculous frivolities that appear to be the norm.

Finn holds his TIE fighter underwear up for all to admire, the grin on his face making Hux blush as he points out how the laser bolts are shooting out of his crotch with a howl that brings tears to Rey’s eyes with how severe her laughter has become. Hux won’t laugh, mostly because he does not find this kind (or any kind, Rose would argue) of humor funny, but also because he is slightly horrified by the idea of the war as a monetary propaganda machine to sell paraphernalia, like the Galaxy hadn’t been on the front lines of its own destruction just a scant year and a half earlier.

The next gift is for Rey. When Poe reaches across his lap to hand it to her, their eyes meet, and Hux thinks he must see some of what he is thinking with the way his face softens and his palm brushes gently over his knee.

Poe’s eyes are dark and warm and full of something that makes Hux’s stomach twist and twist and twist, until all he wants is to slide from the couch and onto the floor beside Poe, bury himself in his warmth and his weight and the sweet sound of his voice. He _wants_ Poe. Not that he hasn’t before this moment, but for whatever reason, seeing him like this: all generous smiles and achingly comfortable with the silliness of these strange moments - it makes Hux hurt with how much he wants, and how much he doubts whether he deserves any of this in his life.

But as Poe holds his eyes while Rey tears through the paper, and as he keeps them even while Rey lifts her gift aloft for all to admire, Hux thinks maybe it isn’t so much what he does or does not deserve, but what he has finally earned. The idea settles strange, threads through the core of him, filling in the fractured pattern of a rotten root system Hux does not remember being purged. It makes him shiver, in the way any sort of emotional vulnerability makes him shiver - like his body is trying to shake free the orbit that has tied him to the idea that whatever it is Poe is offering him, is not something Hux is worthy of.

Because maybe he is worthy. Or, at least, has earned the opportunity to try to be.

“This one is for you,” Poe’s voice slides warm, thick, not at all bitter, into the space separating them. The package he places in Hux’s lap is wrapped in a paper as gaudy as the rest, the edges folded a little wrong, with too much tape holding the seams together. The scrawl across the name tag is constructed from big, bold, confident letters completely committed to the _Hugs_ that they spell, and Hux knows without a doubt that this gift is from Poe, even before he murmurs, “it’s from me, I think you’ll like it.”

It seems everyone here thinks they know what he likes. Hux tries not to wonder how none of them have yet been wrong.

Carefully, he slides his fingers under the fold, pops the tape with the hard ridge of his nail, and peels the wrapping back with as little damage to the paper as he can manage. Poe watches him all the while, dark eyes following the deliberate path his fingers take like their careful attention were on something more precious than this wrapping paper. Hux is pretty sure he is successful keeping his expression neutral, his breath even, and the flush from his cheeks.

But it all falls apart when he peels back the paper to reveal a dark gray blanket make of the softest material he has ever had the visceral pleasure of touching. It slides smooth under his palm, like the luxurious pelt of some foreign creature. And as he lifts the blanket so the folds fall out to a gentle drape, he finds there is a weight to it, a density to whatever material fills the patchwork stitching, so that when it finally settles over his lap it feels more like the comforting press of a thousand gentled hands, than the simple comfort of an average blanket.

But it’s not until Poe murmurs, “Check this out,” that Hux knows his expression breaks, because they have already been here before, long ago. So Hux is less surprised than he is shook when Poe does something to the blanket, triggers a hidden mechanism that causes the blanket to burgeon with an delicate ebbing _warmth_.

It blossoms gentle like the smile on Poe’s face. Like the feeling in Hux’s stomach, the one that has him leaning towards Poe like it is the weight of his hands in his lap, rather than the blanket. But then it _is_ Poe’s hands - strong fingers curling down his sides, past his hips, smoothing the blanket over his thighs.

“Feels nice,” he hears himself say, and Poe _beams_ up at him from his place on the floor - smile wide, eyes crinkled at the corners, hands a welcome weight where they rest in his lap.

When Hux places his own hands on top, he doesn’t so much hold Poe in place as he does confirm his right to be there.

And when he whispers, “thank you _,_ _”_ he thinks Poe hears everything he is really saying, because his hands turn up to capture his, fold them together, so their warmth can be shared alongside their grip. And Hux can’t help but feel that is more a gift than anything else.

-

“I think you need to talk to him,” Rose says around a mouthful of food. He is sitting with her and Rey at a table at the diner round the corner from the center, lunch consisting of salads and sandwiches and a small bowl of bland soup for Hux. Their corner table is dark, the diner sparsely filled, but Hux feels under a spotlight - exposed in a way that makes him want to snarl and sneer and sweep from the diner in a storm of dismissal like he were still a general aboard a star destroyer, wielding power so severely that no one dared see him for what he truly was (a coward, a failure, a useless slip of a boy).

Instead, he examines his emotions from the vantage of the last year; acknowledges that the sources of his uncomfortable feelings are nothing but the very basic fears that anyone in his position might feel: a fear of rejection, a fear of vulnerability, and a fear that he is too late.

“Even if nothing comes of it, you’ll feel better if you talk to him. Leaving it the way you two did-” Rose raises a hand, makes a dismissive gesture Hux isn’t sure he is reading right, “-it’s gonna fester. And you don’t need any more stuff that can fester.”

“I don’t fester,” Hux defends as Rey smiles _that_ smile and Rose covers her mouth over a laugh.

“Would it help if I spoke with him first?” Rey asks in that helpful way she is always offering Hux, as if her abilities with not just the Force were at his disposal in a capacity Kylo Ren’s never had been. But Hux knows better. Knows that what Rey offers is always second to what she has already preemptively concluded for herself, so when Hux gives her _his_ smile, a sharp knowing _I caught you_ , she backtracks quickly with a flush, “Would it help to know I already have spoken to him?”

Rose’s eyes widen and narrow before Hux can construct his own reaction, and then it is no longer a question of would it help as what exactly did Poe say?

“He regrets the way he acted,” Hux’s stomach plummets, sinking through his seat and into Coruscant’s very core, “he thinks he took advantage of you,” and Hux knows Rey does not disagree with that sentiment, she and Finn have said as much before, “and he thinks you want nothing to do with him, and as much as it hurts, he’s committed to giving you your space.”

Her words strike through his heart, knife sharp with a swiftness that feels like another bolt to his chest, but this time, the wound might actually kill him. He has hurt Poe. Everything he has tried to avoid has happened despite his best efforts.

“I don’t want to hurt him,” Hux blurts out - a confession he’s yet to admit, for all the conversations he’s had revolving around Poe. And that couldn’t be his voice shaking, or his frown collecting into a down-turned quiver. “I did not mean to push him away. Not for good, but I would have-” _I would have torn him apart._ The words lodge alongside his voice, as Hux grinds his teeth over the sound collecting at the back of his throat.

Rose and Rey watch him from the quiet of their sympathy, faces schooled in open commiseration while Hux wants nothing more than to hide away behind a mask he no longer carries.

“You definitely need to talk to him,” Rey murmurs gently, hand reaching out to take his - to un-peel his fingers from where his fingernails have dug into his palm. Her thumb soothes over the scarred flesh, and Hux lets her, mostly because it’s a distraction from the twisting turn of his thoughts towards Poe.

But then his mind festers with the idea of what it might feel like to have Poe’s thumb in her place, and Hux knows his friends are right.

Outside, the winter rains have come early, streaking speckled gray against the glass of the window so the lights from the speeder lane trail sparks. Hux watches them fall, tracks their movements as the drops slip and slide and collide with one another until they collect into a flow of water that pools somewhere beyond anything he can see. And he wishes he could be like that water, just a creature committed to the weight of gravity, mindless of the path the physics of his existence determines. Instead, he has to choose his own path, has to make his own commitment, just like he has asked of the former Order members who have passed through his circle of chairs.

“Alright,” Hux eventually breathes. “I’ll talk to him, if he agrees.” And it feels like the natural path, like he has actually been caught in the gravity of something larger than himself, with how easily the words flow out.

-

Dinner that night leaves Hux with the same sleepy lethargy that usually takes him to his spot on the couch, but instead draws him out into the night, where he has huddled up under the pleasant weight of his heated blanket and the breadth of stars that paint the sky above. They twinkle from their frozen fall towards the horizon, a line of sweeping snow dunes broken only by the jagged ridge of evergreens that strike dark across the soft gray-white. Hux imagines the drifts must reach some ten feet at their deepest. Any more snow, and they might have been truly buried - but the clouds have passed, and with it the storm and the danger, leaving behind an aching sprawl of solace that feels far removed from anything so alive as the people who inhabit the cabin.

Hux had felt much the same, fixed in place amongst the landscape of stars, aboard the Star Destroyers he called home; those little caches of life so innocuous in the grand scheme of the universe, so that it was the pursuit of his greater goals that had driven into Hux the idea that he was literally nothing without a purpose. That living was not so much about him or the things in his life he wanted for himself, as it was the legacy he would leave behind.

Now his views on life and living and what made it all worthwhile have been remade in an image he is not quite sure he has the whole scope of - not yet. Because without a purpose to guide him, or a goal to achieve, the world feels so much smaller, so much more personal, where every moment was not so much leading to another as it is infinite in the present. The idea disturbs something inside Hux he once thought stable - as if he is only now reclaiming the concept of a future and what it might hold for him. It leaves him feeling untethered - the weight of his blanket the only anchor keeping him here in this place.

Then the whoosh of the double glass doors sliding open rushes muffled over the weight of the fallen snow, and who walks through grounds Hux so fiercely in the present that he nearly gasps.

Someone had cleared the deck off earlier, pushed the snow from the furniture before carving a path to the hot tub, and the frozen ghost of footprints feels more a premonition than a haunting, as Poe makes his way towards where Hux has taken up space on the swing bench. He’s wearing his leather jacket - barely an acknowledgment of the freezing temperature - but he looks as unperturbed about that as he does anything in his life. Hux watches him openly, allows himself the opportunity despite the rising heat to his face, when Poe looks at him with a matching interest.

Poe has not made a move to sit next to Hux, but still he feels himself shift a little, making space where space already exists - has existed, as if Hux has been waiting all along, now that he’s cleared a path like that made through the snow.

When he says, “Would you like to join me?” it comes out as easily as the weight that lifts when he moves the blanket aside to indicate the place beside him - right beside him - so it is clear to both of them what Hux is asking.

“I’d like that,” Poe breaths, and the words curl to steam as well into knots that settle deep inside Hux’s chest. So much that Hux already feels wrung out by the time Poe lowers himself onto the bench. He’s close - no, he’s right _there_ \- the bench only wide enough to accommodate two without the safe distance of a modesty Hux still can’t help but feel, despite his want for _this_. Poe’s jacket is cold to the touch, where it presses into the sleeve of Hux’s sweater, but he can feel the heat hidden behind it; the ebbing warmth of Poe’s body a rival to the electric blanket in his lap.

Hux pursues that warmth like he once did a certain ragtag group of rebels across the stars, nudging himself under the curl of Poe’s arm, pushing aside the unzipped placket of his jacket, and pressing himself into the warmth of Poe’s side as he settles the blanket over both their laps.

Poe is frozen in place, as if his body isn’t a furnace but a shape carved from ice, which might explain why Hux is still shivering - except, he knows better, now, what this all means.

And when he feels a tremble, a matching quake, as the weight of Poe’s arm comes around him fully, and the heat of his breath hits Hux’s cheek as Poe turns to ask, “Is this alright?” he thinks Poe does too.

“Yes,” Hux affirms. He's glad his voice does not shake along with his body. And then, “Rose and Rey and Finn would tell us we need to talk about this.”

Poe is quiet for a breath, but only because he is gathering it into words, “They’re probably right. Do you want to talk about it?”

“I do, but I am not sure how.” Because for all the talking Hux does, in his circle at the center and then outside it, over a cup of hot tea across the table from his friends, this is the most difficult conversation Hux has ever had. “They tell me I have nothing to apologize for, but I feel the need to. Because I am sorry, for before. For pushing you away.”

“ _I_ _’m_ sorry,” Poe says it into his hair, disturbing the delicate length he has pushed behind his ear. “I’m sorry, I’m the only one who should be sorry. I put you in a position you didn’t want to be in, and when you tried to tell me I ran away. I fucked up, big time.”

Hux releases a breath, and this time it does shake. “I did want it, though,” Hux whispers, softly, but he knows Poe hears because his body coils tight with the admission, with words he did not expect Hux to say. “I wanted it more than anything, but I was afraid I’d hurt you, because I wasn’t…ready, then. I was sure I would destroy whatever was between us, just as I destroyed the Order, and my body, my whole life. And then after, when you left, I was sure I had.”

“Armitage,” Poe’s voice trembles with his name, just as his arm does as it pulls him closer. “You haven’t destroyed anything. I messed up, and I’m so sorry, I’m sorry for everything.”

“I suppose we can both be sorry,” Hux murmurs, closing his eyes as he allows Poe to hold him. His head is turned down, angled to the side, so his cheek catches every warm puff of Poe’s breath. But still, it’s not enough. Hux wants more. Thinks Poe will give it to him, if he asks. But Hux isn’t sure how to ask for more, so he seeks with his body what his voice can not say - shifting a little closer, burrowing himself into Poe’s side like he’s meant to be there. And maybe he is, with the way Poe meets him, arms coming round to circle his waist, to haul him closer, so they’re pressed together, flank to flank, chin to cheek.

But it’s not until Poe speaks that Hux understands just what he is asking for, what he is _allowing_ for himself.

“I think everyone would tell me I am moving too quickly,” Poe speaks softly, “but I’ve already wasted enough time,” said as he pulls away, but only far enough to get two fingers under Hux’s chin to tilt his head up so they are eye to eye. When Hux meets Poe’s stare, he knows what words Poe is about to speak, and the truth of them shakes free a shiver the likes of which he has yet to ever know. “I want to share my life with you, and be a part of your’s. Will you let me? Can we try again? Can we do this, together, Armitage?”

“Yes,” he says without reservation, no longer fighting against a feeling he can hardly contain, “Yes, I want that. I want to be with you, Poe. And I-” he has to take a breath then, lest he be swallowed by the feeling that catches like pain but warms him like Poe. It spills honest with his breath, his words, “-I want to care for you, as you have cared for me. As no one else ever has.”

Poe bites his bottom lip when he grins, eyes glossy with tears he does not shed. Hux sees in him a mirror of himself, feels the burn of his own eyes with tears that have nothing to do with suffering, or pain. The sensation lands strange, collecting in his throat and settling in his gut, but also bursting from his chest, as if the scar was only ever a crude seal for the things Hux has hidden inside himself. He feels overwhelmed to the point that it’s all he can do to cling to Poe and breath through the feelings, anchoring himself in the path of Poe’s fingers from under his chin to along his jaw. The distance between them feels vast, though they are close enough that their breath mingles, moistening his parted lips as he sips in only what air he needs. Any more would be greedy, he tells himself. And this is already so much more than he ever expected.

But Poe is not assuaged. Poe too wants more - asks for it like it’s something he can’t just take, though Hux would let him, now. Instead, Poe leans in so close that Hux feels his words more than he hears them, “Can I kiss you?” he says even as Hux nearly closes the distance himself, assent whispered on his exhale, a _yes_ that evaporates along with his breath and all his reservations, his fear and his pain - and the idea that _this_ , whatever this is, was not ever meant for him.

Their mouths come together, open and tentative with their first touch, a gentle thing that leaves them both breathing heavily. Poe’s fingers have curled over his jaw, beneath his ear, thumb stroking ever so slowly over his cheek - holding Hux to this thing he is finally able to accept for himself. And when he reaches out to know it, to feel happiness coil hot in his chest, Hux can’t help the way his exhale stutters, or how he moves closer, pressing his lips to Poe’s so the pressure becomes less fleeting and more firm. More. He wants more, and he finally allows himself to seek it out, to find it and accept it.

Allows Poe to provide it.

Poe kisses him like he hasn’t been waiting for a whole year and a half. Like they’re back there in his hospital room, or under the wreckage of the Steadfast, finding one another amongst the debris of both their lives. His kiss is slow, lips moving supple against Hux, opening him up, finding his tongue with a brief, gentle sweep that leaves Hux gasping when Poe pulls away. He doesn’t go far, however; breaking the kiss only long enough to give Hux the space he needs to catch his breath, threading his fingers into the hair at the back of his neck, brushing his lips gentle to catch the clouds Hux pants into life between them.

Then Poe is against him again, finding his way inside, making space for himself to settle against the open cusp of Hux’s mouth, where they can come together over and over, at whatever pace they desire. A pace which settles on slow, like the gentle drift of a snowflake descending under its own insubstantial weight, rather than the violent rapture of a star destroyer collapsing from its steadfast place amongst the stars.

They make their way inside. The hour is late, and the day had begun early, and they encounter no one on their way back to their bedroom. His arm is draped over Poe’s shoulders, his blanket clasped fast against his chest, while his leg wobbles on it’s own barely there weight, with how easily Poe supports him. And when he finds himself on his back atop Poe’s bed, he can not keep himself from laughing, because Poe is too busy tucking them in together beneath his blankets to get their clothes off, so that they end up twined together fully clothed under a pile of bedding, no where closer to their destination than they were outside under the fall of stars.

But Poe finds his way despite the hurdles he creates, just as his mouth finds Hux’s cock through the tent of his pants. He mouths at him there, content to have this, as if it were all Hux would allow him. But Hux wants _more,_ and he pushes his waistband down in a demand to have it, and grips Poe’s hair to keep it, when Poe finally swallows him down. He reaches his edge quickly, under the pulsating rhythm of Poe’s mouth and the wet path his tongue forges along the underside of his shaft. And he comes faster yet, when Poe’s fingers curl wet, over the furl of his anus. It only takes two fingers inside him, pressing against that spot, before he ejaculates down Poe’s throat with a throaty gasp.

Still, despite how quickly Hux comes, Poe keeps his pace slow, fingers relenting only a little, as Poe nuzzles his way over his softening cock. Hux pushes the blankets aside, suddenly flushed hot, and wanting to see Poe’s face where he has found his navel beneath the woven thread of his sweater. His hands untwist from their hold, inky hair sliding soft through his fingers as he instead pets through the messy strands. Poe watches him from hooded eyes, mouth a half smile as it trails over the subtle muscles of his lower abdomen, some of the only un-scarred skin left to him. But his body makes up for that in other places, because where his sweater has been pushed up, Hux knows it’s only a matter of millimeters before the mangled edge of his blaster scar is exposed.

Some bold thing inside his chest that might be a remnant of the bolt that nearly killed him compels Hux to push the fabric away. Where the pale splay of his hand draws up, he reveals himself bit by bit, until so much more than a scar is exposed. But Poe’s eyes never leave his, even as his free hand reaches up to trace a single finger over the seam-like edge, his touch light, but the weight of it heavy. And then it settles comforting, when Poe’s palm presses flat over the whole of it, thumb rubbing circles over the heaving pound of his heart behind his ribs.

Hux feels himself growing hard again under the breadth of Poe’s attention.

The third finger is there and gone as fast as Hux can manage it, his hands drawing Poe back up to his lips while his better leg hooks round Poe’s waist. Hux is rolling them over before Poe can protest the tangle of bedclothes falling to the floor. Hux pushes first his own pants, and then Poe’s off, before shucking his shirt while Poe scrambles out of his. He trades warmth in favor of heat as he descends upon Poe’s cock with a swiftness that leaves them both gasping. And as he takes Poe into himself, the stretch is sweet, but the pain is sweeter, and Hux can’t help but think, _this is what I deserve_.

Hux rises more slowly than he descended, riding Poe’s cock like it were his first time doing this, which it is not, but may as well be, considering things like time and consent and the not so small factor of feelings and how they apparently complicate something as simple as sex. This is not simple. Having Poe inside him feels like the unraveling of a knot that he doesn’t remember tying, a bundle of scar tissue that is as buried as the wound on his chest is exposed. And the tangled mess of it releases with a torrent of sensation that is not so much physical as it feels emotional.

He shudders with it, rhythm faltering when a fleeting pulse of panic rises sharp alongside the pleasure, as the head of Poe’s cock drags along his prostate. It feels good. Surely too good to be real, and suddenly Hux is back on the Steadfast buried beneath the weight of all his mistakes, the end descending upon him in a cataclysmic rending of fate that he deserves far more than that stupid rebel pilot who had begged to save his life.

And then the shivers are back, but this time Poe is there to kiss them away.

“Shh,” Poe soothes. Hux doesn’t remember when he started crying, but the tears are there and he can’t stop them now. Doesn’t have the mind to, because his world is turned upside-down again when Poe rolls them back over. Dragging Hux against him, mouth finding his as his cock re-enters him, Poe slides in deep like the first time, but faster, fucking into Hux with a deliberate intention to drive directly into Hux’s prostate, until Hux can think of nothing but the pleasure Poe can create for him, and he’s suddenly shouting that out for the whole of the Galaxy to hear.

Poe captures the sound with his mouth. Contra to the rhythm of his hips, Poe’s kiss is gentle - _gentling_ \- as Hux’s sounds taper into a low moan that Poe matches, open mouths brushing as Poe maintains the deep fucking that has set Hux right at the precipice. He wants to come, wants to tumble over the edge and feel what it is like to really fall, and he knows if he can just touch his cock he can. But when he reaches down, Poe catches him, tangles their fingers together as he presses the back of Hux’s hand into the bedding beside his head, only to collect his other hand to do the same.

Poe’s hands are warm, palms a little moist, his fingers clutching with a tender mooring that has Hux writhing with gasps against these not unwelcome shackles. Above him, Poe watches with hooded eyes and a parted mouth, his half grin enough to be infuriating at any other time except now, where it instead blooms hot over Hux’s chest, blanketing his scar red against the pale stretch of his skin. It’s intimate. More intimate than the fucking, Hux marvels, and then he blushes harder.

“That’s it,” Poe encourages, “let me see you,” his eyes maintain their contact as his head dips over Hux’s chest to press his smile against Hux’s scar. He gasps when Poe’s teeth drag over the patchwork skin before his lips drop a kiss, and his tongue words, “let me have you,” Poe begs, moving faster, hips driving deeper, relentless in their rhythm against his prostate. Hux whimpers with the sensation, whole body shivering with the orgasm that sits just out of reach, waiting for a trigger that comes from Poe, when he demands, “let me love you, Armitage,” as his hips drive in with a rolling grind.

Hux comes untouched between them with a strangled sound that is so close to a sob that he thinks it might explain why his tears have not abated.

Poe maintains his rhythm through Hux’s orgasm. It drags out of him with each pulsating twist of his balls and clench of his anus, until Hux is shaking against the bedding, sobbing out gasps as Poe’s cock fills him over and over and then up when Poe comes deeply inside him, filling him until there is no room left and Hux is leaking with release, both his own and Poe’s and some nameless thing that has taken up space inside his head for far too long.

When it's over, and they both are panting into the sudden stillness of the room, Hux wraps his legs around Poe’s hips before he can slide out. He holds them together, tipping his chin up so Poe can find him with a kiss, hands still tangled together - sweaty now - their bodies bare but warmed against the chill. Idly, as Poe's mouth moves against his and their breath warms to hot between them, Hux thinks he is not returning to his bed by the drafty window. Maybe, he is not returning to his lonely apartment over Coruscant’s canals, or the sad programming job that barely lets him make ends meet, let alone live a life.

Because somehow, despite how his body shakes, how it still _aches_ , Hux feels more put together now than he ever did under the lights of the medical ward, as if Poe had been that missing piece, that balm to a wound Hux had not known how to heal.

-

“I got a cabin for Life Day. Finn and Rey will be there, and Poe too. Can you come? I think you should come,” Rose blurts out from behind her mug. Her eyes are smiling even though her mouth is busy pulling a sip of caf that is surely still too hot to drink. Hux nearly spits out his own tea, barely manages not to because that would be not only uncouth (and a waste of perfectly good tea), but entirely too telling of the thoughts going through his head.

Instead, Hux sets his tea on his tiny kitchen table, stares down at the glassy black surface as if the answer he seeks is there in the slow curl of steam making shapes in the suddenly heavy air. But he knows that what he seeks can only be found inside himself, just as he already knows the answer - has known, for as long as he has asked himself the very question Rose hides behind an offer of a holiday weekend with friends.

And he thinks he’s ready. Thinks he can do this, thinks he won’t fall this time, despite the weight of what he carries.

“Yes,” he says, he affirms, “yes, I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Holidays my friends! Please let me know what you think, your feedback is always precious to me ♥
> 
> Like my stuff? Come follow me on twitter @goddessviraaja and tumblr @viraaja


End file.
